Wachovia Championship round three: A Sunday to savour

Hang onto your hats. It’s gonna blow Sunday and that could throw everything up in the air.

Saturday’s gripping round is a hard act to follow. With winds possible gusting in the 30mph range it’s likely to be more of an error fest than the birdie and eagle fest it was in round three.

Golfing snobs complain about competitions that produce “too many birdies", yet you only had to listen to the hollering round the course to understand how exciting Saturday was after the rain had softened it up. What makes Quail Hollow so good is those last three holes waiting to exact a terrible punishment on the unwary or over-ambitious.

One who magnificently escaped their clutches was Rory Sabbatini, who came up with a fascinating explanation for why he has suddenly come good at a competition where his previous best is 40th. Remember how he went to Hawaii especially early to plot his assault on the Mercedes Championship and get his season off to a roaring start? He fell flat on his face and it was downhill from there until he went to a physiotherapist.

Apparently there were more things wrong with his body than you could shake a five iron at: shoulders, hips, you name it, all behaving incredibly badly. With the physio’s help he straightens them all out and, hey presto, almost wins the Masters. Clearly, though, these things need constant fine-tuning, because it was only at the start of Saturday’s round he realised his arms and hands were not right for his swing. Another adjustment and, abracadabra, a course record. I do wonder, like the constant changes of equipment some golfers indulge in, how much of all this is in the mind.

What will certainly be in Rory’s mind Sunday is his first-time final pairing with Tiger Woods. Being such a temperamental player, it’s hard to know which way that will go. It’s also hard to see how Tiger will go. Yet again Saturday he put himself in some awful situations and produced some incredible scrambling to get out them. I don’t read too much into those last two bogeys. By that time everyone was in a hurry to finish before total darkness, and they almost needed miner’s helmets to do it.

But there are enough good players around to give a stuttering Tiger a run for his money. Sabbatini might suffer a reaction to yesterday’s fortune, but two shots behind is the “day four don” Vijay Singh and Arron Oberholser, the only player left with three rounds in the sixties. I would be more impressed with that if he hadn’t done the same three years ago before shooting 72 on the Sunday and losing a playoff. But I still rate his chances.

Don’t rule out Phil Mickelson, whose stellar round Saturday was spoilt by a double bogey on the last. Steve Stricker has already had some useful results this season, leads the field for accuracy off the tee and is putting like a demon. And hats off, if the wind hasn’t done it already, to Ken Duke. Since he found his stride at the Heritage three weeks ago he has been quietly stacking up the dollars.

Heck, maybe Anthony Kim can produce another of his final round flashes to blow the rest of the field away.