At 4.15pm yesterday The Open Championship was briefly turned back 11 years.
The last time the event was held at Carnoustie, one name dominated the golfing world.
Tiger Woods was in his pomp that year, arriving in pursuit of a hat-trick of consecutive Open wins. He was to make up for the disappointment of failing to do so by claiming his fourth USPGA victory the following month and his third US Open title the following year.
That was before his life and his golf unravelled, however, and while he remained competitive for a while without adding to that 14th Major success at Torrey Pines a decade ago, when he put the sixth birdie of yesterday’s round on his card at the 14th hole his name topped the leaderboard at a Major championship for the first time since the USPGA at Kiawah Island six years ago.
Afterwards he claimed not to have noticed he had spent some 20 minutes leading the field, but there could be little doubt that the 78 other men in the field did and that he had achieved his principal objective on the day of getting himself into a position from which he could make a challenge.
“It’s been a few years since I’ve felt like this,” he admitted, following his five-under-par 66. “I didn’t know I was tied for the lead. I know I was within one, but I was right there. It would be better on Sunday, but I’ve got a chance at this, which is great. It certainly is possible. I’ve shown that I’ve been there close enough with a chance to win this year. Given what happened the last few years, I didn’t know if that would ever happen again, but here I am with a chance coming Sunday in a Major championship. It’s going to be fun.
“If they get to double digits, I’m still only five back. That’s certainly doable with hopefully the weather that comes in tomorrow. If it doesn’t come in and we get conditions like this then we know we’re going to have to shoot between six, seven, eight under par tomorrow to have a chance. I didn’t want to be too far back if the guys got to 10-under today. I had to stay within reach and five is definitely within reach.”
As satisfying as it was for him to carve his way through the field as he did after starting the third round with 28 players ahead of him, the fighting finish of a man who was not ranked in the world top 1000 this time last year arguably made the most compelling case for seeing him as a serious contender in the final round.
He suffered a very bad break at the treacherous par-three 16th, having seen his tee shot come within two inches of finishing perfectly only to fall off the green. That resulted in the first bogey of his round. Much of the good work looked like being frittered away when he then hauled what was intended to be a safe iron shot off the 18th tee towards the Barry Burn.
What followed was highly reminiscent of the glory days as he got the sort of luck more associated with him as the ball was snarled up by rough rather than taking a dip and he then laid up and saved par.
“After I birdied 14, I still had some work to do. I’ve got four more holes to go. I was just concentrating on trying to play the last four holes under par,” he said. “That was big for me just to not finish with two bogeys on the last three holes, playing as well as I did. We knew there were going to be 10, 12 guys with a chance to win on Sunday and it’s turning out to be that. As I said, I had to try not to let these guys get too far out of reach if they got to double digits.”
They are not and the most feared figure in the field knows he still has a chance.
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