A month later, the Australian is leading the British Open entering Monday’s final round at St. Andrews.
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“If it adds more pressure, it just makes me feel like this is something that’s a little more special”, he said.
The first sub-63 round in major history looked a distinct possibility despite a heavy rain shower hitting the Old Course at 1230, with Australia’s Marc Leishman seven under for his first 13 holes and eight under overall. “I didn’t hear you, or want to or how would I have… even if I did listen, why would I know?” I want to win.
But if there is history in the making at the home of golf, it no longer has to come from just Spieth.
Former British Open champion David Duval was enjoying a sparkling third round on Sunday as the weather-affected championship resumed under cloudy conditions at St Andrews.
There’s a still-alive Grand Slam bid; an Irish amateur by way of collegiate golf in Birmingham, Ala., sharing the lead with a past champion at St. Andrews; and a cavalcade of stars past and present stalking close behind.
Birdies on the 15th and 16th gave Pepperell a share of the lead, only for the 24-year-old from Oxford to drive out of bounds on the 17th, slicing his tee shot off the wall of the Old Course Hotel. Competing against the best golfers in the world and the Dustin Johnsons and Jordan Spieths and Rorys is not a fair fight when I haven’t played a golf tournament in three or four months and they’ve been playing constantly. If we were playing an amateur event here, I wouldn’t be too surprised by the scores I shot. It just happens to be the biggest event in the world.
“I expected to play well at some point”, said Duval, who spends more time commentating on golf than playing it these days. Day is just as big of a threat. Ten other players are one or two strokes behind Spieth. Oosthuizen (“oo-west-HIGH-zin”) doesn’t own the most glamorous or easiest-to-pronounce name in the game, but he has the chops – and putter – to excel at major championship golf. In that time, just 52 holes were completed for a combined 21 over par, with only three birdies.
A victory would send him to the PGA Championship with a shot at the Grand Slam, and at worse put him in elite company.
The last amateur to win the Open was Bobby Jones in 1930, but that is to underplay the differences between the eras.
“It would be an unbelievable piece of experience that no one could ever take away from you”.
And Spieth says that’s a score he’s more than capable of reducing on “moving day”.
“To be able to go into the last major and accomplish something that’s never been done in our sport is something that only comes around to a couple of people ever”. “The challenges of it I find intriguing, frustrating, uplifting, all of those things”.
It forced the first Monday finish in the British Open in 27 years.
“It’s a pretty tight leaderboard if you look at it. There’s a lot of good players that are behind us trying to chase that lead”.
Round 3 was an unsettling but exciting one at the Open Championship Sunday: Strong winds had come to St. Andrews, and with it a sense that the leaderboard could blow any which way. It didn’t get any better on the back side, as he sprayed shots all over the course, struggled with the putter, and finished with three straight bogeys.
Spieth, the youngest professional in the field, seemed calm despite the historic moment in front of him. Even during the long delay on Saturday, he said he hasn’t thought much about the slam.
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“You see an old test like this one and start wondering what they can do with it to keep it up to sort of modern times”. Frustrated by poor putting and an inability to gather any momentum, he walked over to his caddie, Michael Greller, feeling like he wanted to hit something, “I couldn’t hold it in”, he said.
