Matt Wallace revealed his mind was not even on playing good golf as he carded an excellent bogey-free 66 to take control after three days of the Scottish Championship.
The Englishman recently slipped out of the world’s top 50 for the first time in almost two years after just one top 10 finish in 2020 but he has looked back to his best at Fairmont St Andrews.
Wallace has four European Tour wins to his name and it was easy to see why as he carded an eagle and four birdies to propel himself to 18 under and into a three-shot lead over countryman Garrick Porteous.
The Ryder Cup hopeful looks to be hitting some form just at the right time as the race to be part of Padraig Harrington’s European team resumes in the new year, and he believes a new mental approach is helping him rediscover his best.
“They’ve been telling me if I did this, it would come good at some point so I really tried hard today,” he told europeantour.com.
“It was nice to really focus on the process rather than try and play good golf. It was literally like ‘let’s work on this and see how it goes’ and it came good.
“I enjoyed it a lot. Especially at the end there to finish the way I did was really nice. It’s probably the best I’ve ever handled myself.”
Wallace birdied the short fourth and when given another opportunity at a gettable par four on the seventh, he holed from 20 feet for an eagle to turn in 33.
He put an approach to four feet on the 14th and then holed a brilliant bunker shot on the 17th before taking advantage of the par five last to burst clear.
Porteous won the Amateur Championship in 2013 but is still looking for a first professional win on a top-flight tour and he matched Wallace with a 66 to sit a shot ahead of Spaniard Adrian Otaegui and two clear of American Sean Crocker.
Northern Ireland’s Jonathan Caldwell and English pair Chris Paisley and Eddie Pepperell were at 12 under, with the home challenge being led by Calum Hill and Marc Warren, who were 10 shots off the lead.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here