Patrick Cantlay<\/a> also shot 66 after a 77 and a 67 the first two days. He became the fifth player in the last 50 years to post back-to-back bogey-free rounds at one Masters.<\/p>\nThe average score has decreased each round, from 74.65 to 72.85 to 70.63. The previous low for a third round was 70.77 in 2019.<\/p>\n
“It’s playing a bit shorter because it’s firm,” Rose said. “So if you are really on your game, there’s a few more short irons, and the greens are just playable enough where with a 9-iron and a wedge, you can control your ball into certain pin locations. If it was playing as long as it normally is with the greens the way they are, that would be a pretty unplayable test to golf.<\/p>\n
“I think what we’re gaining off the tee is offsetting a little bit the firmness of the greens.”<\/p>\n
Rose is well aware that anything can happen on Sunday at the Masters.<\/p>\n
Last year, he trailed McIlroy by seven shots entering the final round, only to catch him before losing in a playoff.<\/p>\n
“I think I had to have a big mental reset going into the final round last year,” Rose said. “You know, this year it’s like — it feels like a little bit of a free run at it.”<\/p>\n
Major36*W?’25 MastersCameron Young8–’18 U.S. OpenDaniel Berger11No’18 U.S. OpenTony Finau11No’75 U.S. OpenFrank Beard8No1920 OpenLen Holland11No1904 OpenJames Braid8No* Deficit after 36 holes<\/p>\n
Burns, who played in the final pairing with McIlroy on Saturday, said he simply tried to focus on his own game — and he’ll do the same Sunday.<\/p>\n
“I can’t control anything anyone else does,” Burns said. “I can only control myself, and so that’s kind of what the mentality we took today. Just focus on our process and go out there and compete.”<\/p>\n
On Sunday, Young will go off in the final pairing with McIlroy.<\/p>\n
He has some history on his side, as the last two winners of the Players Championship have gone on to win the Masters.<\/p>\n
“Yeah, I’ll probably give myself some time to think about it right now for the next 30 minutes or so,” Young said of his 65. “After that, it’s kind of a battle of managing how you want to react to those things. To me, it’s just a matter of going right back to how am I going to run my day tomorrow.”<\/p>\n
The Associated Press contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Apr 11, 2026, 09:01 PM ET AUGUSTA, Ga. — The Masters looked as if it might be a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":579074,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":["post-579073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=579073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/579074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}