TROON, Scotland — As weather conditions deteriorated Saturday, the intensity in the air at Royal Troon ratcheted up. After a thrilling Day 3, 24 players will enter the final round at or within six shots of the lead to set up a potentially epic final round.
After a pleasant morning, wind, rain and cold punished the later groups and simultaneously opened the door for a host of new contenders.
Here are the top numbers and notes from Round 3 of the 152nd Open Championship.
1. With short sleeves and his hat turned backward, Billy Horschel assembled arguably the most memorable round of his successful pro career. The 37-year-old American sprinted to a 4-under 32 on the front and held on during the difficult back side to shoot 69 and take a one-shot lead into Sunday. This is the first 54-hole lead or co-lead in a major for Horschel, whose best result in the game’s four biggest events is a tie for fourth at the U.S. Open 11 years ago.
Horschel has made it a point to play in DP World Tour events, specifically ones in Europe, that aren’t otherwise sanctioned by his home PGA Tour. The highlight of that schedule evolution came in 2021 when he won at Wentworth, becoming the first American to win the DP World Tour flagship event since Arnold Palmer in 1975. He will try to follow in The King’s footsteps again — Palmer won The Open in 1962 at Troon.
Technically, Horschel ranked 14th in the field Saturday in strokes gained around the green, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. Horschel’s run of excellent chips and bunker shots on the back nine put him in a position to win his first major championship.
Billy Horschel with a brilliant shot from the bunker on the 14th.
He has that to save par and remain tied for the lead. pic.twitter.com/sCxqCO12Ig
— The Open (@TheOpen) July 20, 2024
2. The second half of the unlikely final pairing is South African Thriston Lawrence, who took advantage of the more benign early conditions to shoot a sparkling round of 65. The 27-year-old has won four times on the DP World Tour since the beginning of 2022, but his best major result to date is a tie for 42nd place.
Sam Burns played the first 11 holes Thursday in 7 over par. After rounds of 69 and 65, he’s among the players who are one shot off the lead heading into Sunday. A Burns victory would be one of the most remarkable in-week turnarounds in Open history. The worst 18-hole position by an eventual winner in men’s major history is T-84 by Steve Jones at the 1996 U.S. Open. Burns was 12 spots lower than that.
Should he win, Burns’ opening-round 76 would be the highest first-round score by an Open winner since Walter Hagen in 1924.
3. Justin Rose has probably never been so fired up about a round of 73 in his life. After fighting through the brutal conditions Saturday afternoon, he, too, is just one off the pace with 18 holes to play.
Rose won his only major to date at the 2013 U.S. Open at Merion. If Rose were to win, it would be the most days in men’s golf history between a player winning sequential major titles in his career, at 4,026, eight more than Hale Irwin’s wait between the 1979 and 1990 U.S. Opens. With a win Sunday, Rose would be just the third Englishman all-time to win The Open and U.S. Open in his career, joining Jim Barnes and Tony Jacklin.
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4. The betting favorite entering Sunday is reigning PGA champion Xander Schauffele, who authored one of the most impressive rounds of his career with a Saturday 69. Among the last 12 groups Saturday, only Horschel (69) and Schauffele shot rounds under par. The other 18 players were a combined 74 strokes over par.
The relentlessly consistent Schauffele is the only player to be in the top 12 entering the final round of all four men’s majors this season. With a win, he would be the first player to claim the PGA and Open in the same season since Rory McIlroy in 2014 and the first to get his first two major wins in the same year since Jordan Spieth in 2015.
5. A double bogey on the last hole moved Dan Brown out of the lead, but at just one shot back, he will have more than a puncher’s chance Sunday to pull off one of the biggest surprises in The Open Championship history.
Only three men since 1900 have won in their major championship debuts: Francis Ouimet (1913 U.S. Open), Ben Curtis (2003 Open) and Keegan Bradley (2011 PGA). The last Englishman to win in his major championship debut was Horace Rawlins at the 1895 U.S. Open. For perspective, Rawlins died nearly nine decades ago.
Brown picked up more than two strokes on the field Saturday on the greens, further increasing his lead this week in the strokes gained putting metric. Like Rose, Brown will try to become the first qualifier to win The Open since Paul Lawrie in 1999.
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6. World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler couldn’t get any putts to fall in Round 3 but sits just two shots off the lead. Scheffler was excellent with his ball striking, hitting all but one fairway and 14 greens in regulation. Those opportunities went mostly for naught, though, as he didn’t make a putt of 8 feet or longer and ranked 78th of 80 players in strokes gained putting.
Scheffler hit one of the most impressive shots of the season at 17. From 238 yards away, playing into the wind, he hit it inside of 4 feet and buried the birdie putt. With a win Sunday, Scheffler would be the first player to win The Players and multiple major championships in the same season.
7. Shane Lowry shot a disappointing 77 but is still firmly in the mix, three shots behind Horschel. Lowry, who gained more than five strokes on the field putting in rounds 1 and 2 combined, had a dismal day on the greens Saturday, sitting just one spot ahead of Scheffler in strokes gained.
Lowry is a major champion, a multiple-time Ryder Cupper and an excellent player, but he is prone to some stinker rounds in majors. Saturday was his 27th round making either one or no birdies in the majors since 2010. In that span, only three players have more.
It’s not unprecedented for a player to hold a 36-hole lead in a major, have a tough Saturday in difficult conditions and still win. The last player to hold the Friday night lead, shoot 77 or worse in Round 3 and still win that major was Nick Faldo at the 1989 Masters.
Sam Burns is one shot off the lead heading into the Open Championship final round. (Andrew Redington / Getty Images)
8. The last 24 pairings of the third round had wildly different on-course experiences Saturday. Groups 17 through 28 played to a scoring average of 71.46, with nine rounds winding up under par. The 12 groups that rounded out the day had a scoring average nearly 2 1/2 strokes higher, 73.92.
Si Woo Kim made a hole-in-one on the 17th, the first in recorded history on that hole in The Open Championship play. At 238 yards, it was the longest ace at The Open since they started keeping track of such things more than 40 years ago. The shot also perfectly showed how dramatically the conditions changed as the day went on. Hours later, Schauffele landed his tee shot in nearly the same spot and it died on arrival, ending up short of the green.
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9. Justin Thomas went back up his own Royal Troon roller coaster Saturday, bouncing back from a poor Friday with a brilliant 67. Thomas’ scores this week through three rounds have been 68-78-67. He is the second player in the last decade to have a 10-shot differential from his rounds 1 and 2 scores and his rounds 2 and 3 scores at The Open. In 2017, Paul Casey started 67-77-67.
The historic up-and-down is amusing, but Thomas has vaulted himself into contention heading into Sunday. JT came from seven back to win his second PGA at Southern Hills. He’s four shots behind Horschel entering Sunday.
10. Each of the last six men’s major winners held the lead or co-lead entering the final round. We might be due, then, for a comeback winner — the last time we saw seven in a row in the men’s game was a stretch of 12 from 1999 to 2002, and prime Tiger Woods was responsible for seven of those.
The largest comeback to win The Open since 2000 is six shots, done twice in that span: by Padraig Harrington in 2007 and Ernie Els five years later. Ninety-nine of the last 100 Open winners have been in the top 10 entering the final round, the lone exception being in 1999 with Lawrie, who was tied for 14th and 10 shots behind.
(Top photo of Shane Lowry: Paul Ellis / AFP via Getty Images)
