PGA champion Jimmy Walker held steady at 70, placing him four back and in a three-way tie for third with 36-hole leader Kevin Chappell, who shot a 71, and Smylie Kaufman, who finished at 68.
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Remnants of Hermine are expected Monday, so the starting times have been moved forward to give the PGA Tour the best chance to finish. Chappell hit five (of six) GIR after, but finished with six straight pars to fall off the pace.
“Obviously it’s a nice way to finish, with an eagle”, the four-time major victor said on www.pgatour.com “With the conditions as tricky as they are (on Sunday), hopefully I’ll be in with a shout (on Monday)”.
Casey made his at the right time, and his eagle at the 18th sent him home with a smile.
“I had 212 yards back into the wind and it was a great shot”.
As the wind picked up, no one could stay with him.
A 13-times victor on the European Tour, Casey played in three Ryder Cups but was controversially left off the 2010 team despite being one of the world’s top ranked players at the time. I’ve had a few events out here and only got one win, so I’d love to double that tally.
But bad news for the rest of the field: Casey says he’s a really good wind player, especially with the way he’s striking the ball. 1 and 10 tees in 10-minute intervals, and the PGA Tour anticipates a 2 p.m. finish without delays.
“A lot of guys were tearing it up”, he said.
Casey has been through that before.
Casey has one prior PGA Tour victory, defeating J.B. Holmes in a playoff to claim the 2009 Shell Houston Open.
They seemed to play the same schedule, and Casey said that made it even tougher. And then there were the injuries, which slowed his career.
All he has left is one more round, and what figures to be a day of nasty weather.
World No 1 Jason Day had 67 to finish 8-under while the remaining two Australians in the field, Marc Leishman (67) and Aaron Baddeley (75), have scraped into the third round of the play-offs, the BMW Championship at Crooked Stick in IN, by virtue of being in the top 70.
The 27-year-old from Northern Ireland fell out of the “Big 3” conversation earlier this year when Dustin Johnson won the U.S. Open, Henrik Stenson won the British Open and McIlroy kept sliding, largely because of his putting.
Johnson had a disastrous day and took a dive on the leaderboard, putting a double bogey and three bogeys on his card in a 75.
The top five heading to the Tour Championship at East Lake in Atlanta in two weeks’ time have a huge advantage in trying to claim the $10 million bonus. McIlroy, who missed the cut in the PGA Championship and was an afterthought last week when the FedEx Cup playoffs began, already was 4-over-par just three holes into this tournament at the TPC Boston.
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He went to the turn in 5-under to apply pressure to Casey and eventually signed for a 65, the equal best round of the day alongside Scott.
