OAKMONT, Pa. (AP) — Sam Burns only wobbled twice on a soggy Oakmont course Saturday and held his nerve with a great lag from just inside 60 feet on the final hole for a 1-under 69, leaving him one round away from a U.S. Open title and no margin for error.
Burns, who has never contended in his 20 previous majors, next takes on the Sunday pressure of golf’s most stringent test alongside Adam Scott, the 44-year-old Australian and the only player among the top 10 with experience winning a major.
Scott, whose lone major victory was 12 years ago at the Masters, didn’t make a mistake since a soft bogey on the opening hole and looked far younger than his 44 years down the stretch with brilliant iron play and enough putts for a 67, leaving him one shot behind.
This was shaping up to be a wild chase to the finish, with only four players under par. That starts with Burns at 4-under 206. He has five PGA Tour titles, the last one more than two years ago. He is coming off a playoff loss last week in the Canadian Open.
J.J. Spaun, who lost in a playoff at The Players Championship in March, kept pace with Burns throughout the back nine until the end, when he couldn’t save par from a bunker and shot 69. He ed Scott a shot behind.
“It seemed like we were kind of back and forth,” Spaun said. “He would take the lead, I would take the lead, I would fall back, whatever. But it was fun. You can’t really play against your opponent; you got to play this course. There’s just so much on demand with every shot.”
The other survivor to par was Viktor Hovland, who has been smiling as much as anyone on a course that has been exasperating to so many all week. Hovland salvaged a bogey from an opening tee shot into the bushes and an exquisite shot off the muddied cart path.
But he hit the pin on the uphill ninth hole for birdie and hit an amazing wedge from the cabbage left of the 17th green for a tap-in birdie. He closed with a bogey from the rain-soaked rough on the 18th for a 70 and was three behind.
“I’m well aware that I’ve got a chance tomorrow, and if I shoot a low round of golf tomorrow then anything can happen,” Hovland said. “But there’s a lot of good players around me. Adam Scott played a brilliant round today, just didn’t really miss a shot. That forces me to play some really good golf tomorrow.”
UNT product Carlos Ortiz turned in one of the most remarkable performances by going bogey-free for 30 consecutive holes. The streak ended on the 18th, but the Mexican still had a 67 and was very much in range at even-par 210.
Missing from the mix was Dallas’ Scottie Scheffler, the world’s No. 1 player who had won three of his last four tournaments coming into the U.S. Open. Scheffler never found any momentum, with one critical stretch coming right before the turn.
After holing a 20-foot birdie putt on the sixth, Scheffler saved par after driving into the rough on No. 7 and hitting wedge to 3 feet. But then what looked like a tap-in par on the long par-3 eighth turned into a shocking miss.
He wound up with a 70, moving him from a tie for 23rd to just outside the top 10. But he was eight shots behind Burns, his best friend on tour with whom he shares a house at the majors.
“I put myself in this position,” Scheffler said. “It’s not the position I want to be in, but I’ve done a good job of hanging in there and staying in the tournament.”
The best news for this U.S. Open was that it finished the third round without weather getting in the way. Oakmont received an inch of rain from when played ended on Friday evening. The USGA offered to refund tickets to spectators who didn’t want to traipse through the muck.
Divots taken from the fairways looked like pelts, and the greens were noticeable softer and more receptive. There was one spell midway through the round when umbrellas were out and the sun was shining.
Everyone plodded along, trying desperately to avoid rough that hasn’t been cut and greens that never seem to lose their speed.
Burns, a 28-year-old from from Louisiana, had the look of someone determined to add his name to the list of young Americans ready to capture a major. He took a most unusual route on the tough third hole with a drive well to the left, over the church pew bunkers and into the adjacent fourth fairway, allowing him to avoid a blind shot.
He picked up birdies with a wedge from the fairway to a back pin on No. 5 and a tee shot to 7 feet on the accessible par-3 13th. Equally important were the three times he saved par from the fairway after getting out of position off the tee
Then came the closing stretch. He clipped a wedge that raced toward a back pin and checked up a foot away on the short par-4 17th. And he caught a break on the 18th when his drive into the rough caught a good lie, a rarity at Oakmont, allowing him to reach the back of the green nearly 60 feet away. He gently rolled the putt down to 4 feet for one last par and the lead.
