Pablo Ereño has experienced first-hand on Saturday the 7,554,763rd episode of how luck also plays a part in sport and, of course, specifically in golf. The Madrilenian, as we told you in Ten Golf on Friday, made the cut in the nick of time at the International Series Japan. A fabulous 8-iron turned into a birdie on his penultimate hole put him into the weekend by exactly the score required.
That meant that today he would have been due to tee off in the early groups on the moving day looking for a strong comeback, relying on the fact that playing conditions are usually better in the early hours of the day than as the morning and afternoon progress. All the more so this Saturday at Caledonian Golf Club, where forecasts were already pointing to exactly that, calm weather in the early hours and complications later on.
So, precisely because of this, with the afternoon expected to be unsettled weather-wise, the organisers of this first tournament of the 2026 International Series decided to send players out from two tees and in groups of three. The two-tee start after the cut is known as a u-draw, U-shaped tee times. It means that both the last qualifiers to make the cut and the front qualifiers tee off at the same time from the 10th and the 1st tees, respectively.
As a result, Pablo Ereño went out in the penultimate group of the day from the 10th, just 16 minutes before the feature group from the 1st did, meaning he played under the same conditions, which were by far the worst of the day. A total of 25 players carded under-par rounds in this third round of the International Series, but the vast majority had gone out in the early groups of the day. In fact, of the eight last groups that went out from the 1st tee (24 players), only one, the Australian Travis Smyth, played under par.
The consequence is that Ereño had to cope with the worst conditions and carded a 75 that prevented him from moving up the leaderboard. He sits at +3 in the closing stages. The par 3s (three bogeys out of four) played him a nasty trick, as did a double bogey at the 15th. Basically, he made bogey every time he missed the green. Thus, he could not take advantage of the moving day as players who teed off very early did (which would have been the case for the Spaniard if it had not been a u-draw), such as Asuten Truslow, author of the day’s best card (66 strokes), who moved into sixth.
For the leaders, then, it has also been a day of survival. In that respect, the Korean Hongtaek Kim (-10) has hung on as best he could with a 72 (+1), and is tied at the top with the Japanese Shugo Imahira (-10), who carded a PAR. The leaderboard, obviously, has tightened. One shot back is Yubin Yang (-9) and two shots back are Travis Smyth (-8), who best took advantage of the day, and the Indian Karandeep Konchhar (-8).
The International Series Japan is the first of this series of tournaments in 2026. Remember that the top player or players on the ranking of this series of events included on the Asian Tour will obtain playing rights to enter LIV Golf next year. We say the top player or players because it has not yet been determined by LIV
