Masters round three: It's not in the bag for Tiger yet

So the fat lady’s already on the 18th green and, if she isn’t singing, is certainly clearing her throat. There’s barely a blog or a column that hasn’t put the green jacket on Tiger Woods. It’s hardly surprising: he played awful enough golf Saturday to go into the clubhouse four off the pace, yet ended the day just a shot back. That’s the wonder of Tiger.

When not bigging him up in press conferences, his opponents did their best to clear the way for him on the field of battle. They can’t complain. Conditions are excruciatingly tough, even farcical at times, but they are equally fair (or unfair) for everyone, including Tiger.

From that aspect alone he would be a worthy champion. Others have periodically over-reached for the stars while Tiger beavered away at whatever he could get for a result after four days. One enormous positive of a Woods victory would be the nonsense it would make of all the course fiddles and faddles by the august Augusta authorities, because they were essentially put in place to stop Tiger. Ha!

What kind of crazy competition is it where the third round scoring average (77.35), with supposedly the best players left in the competition, is worse than the rounds that also included the relative dross (round one 76.19, round two 75.63)? Saturday’s figures tell a woeful story: Appleby’s 218 is the highest 54-hole leading total in tournament history. The third round average is the highest since the Fifties and the highest in any round since 1981. Only one person broke par Saturday - Retief Goosen - and only two equalled it - Tiger and Lee Westwood.

The cold gusty weather that helped make Saturday such a nightmare looks set to continue - the cold at least. Forecasts suggest the wind will be light in the morning, but may pick up later.

Anyway, I’m going to spit into the wind Sunday and suggest it’s not half as nailed on for Tiger as his odds-on price suggests. We’ve already seen how dramatically things can shift in these conditions, but I’m going for a slightly less windy day making it easier for the front-runners to hold on to what they’ve got. So I’m not looking past the top seven.

Anyone there could get lucky Sunday, but I’m going to take a punt on the two front runners with Tiger. Stuart Appleby hasn’t done it in a major, but he sure knows by now how its done on a Sunday and I’m taking his triple bogey on the 17th Saturday as an aberration. Everyone’s quoting the fact that the winner has come from the final pairing for the last 16 years to back Tiger. But I trump that with the stat that only once in the last seven years has the third round leader not gone on to win. And of course there’s the one everybody quotes: Tiger has never come from behind to win a major. Figures schmigures.

But there’s another dark horse attracting my money. Justin Rose is looking good on four counts: he has ridden his luck well enough to stay in the hunt; he’s not facing the pressures of leading into the final day; he’s not paired with Tiger; and he is capable of some of the finest golf going. And I say that as someone who has often enough lamented his lack of “bottle” in the past. Maybe it’s patriotic wishful thinking, but then again maybe he’s in the mood to prove me wrong at last.