– David Puig (-13) has signed the best score in the third round of the BMW Australian PGA Championship, a card of 65 strokes at the Royal Queensland Golf Club in Brisbane, six under par for the day, which has placed him in joint leadership of the tournament alongside Portuguese Ricardo Gouveia (-13) and Australian Anthony Quayle (-13). They will be the three players in the featured group in the decisive round, although it feels like the final victory is still within reach for more than a dozen players, including some big names like Min Woo Lee (-12), Adam Scott (-11), Marc Leishman (-11), or Daniel Hillier (-11), who once again finds himself in the final groups on Sunday.
– Puig is displaying a very orderly game overall, as evidenced by the fact that he has only made two bogeys in 54 holes. Today, for example, he didn’t record any, just like in the first round. This Saturday, he started strongly, immediately challenging the leaders with birdies on holes 1 and 2, and then capitalised on the three par 5s of the Australian course to leave himself with this splendid opportunity to claim his first victory on the DP World Tour. And it must be emphasised every time this player visits the European circuit, even though his presence has been very limited so far: the numbers of the young Catalan on the DP World Tour are truly eye-opening.
– This Australian PGA is the tenth tournament of the regular European circuit calendar he has played in his career, and the first thing to note is that he has always made the cut. It’s no small feat, but obviously, it doesn’t stop there. So far, and up to today, David has completed 38 competitive rounds on the DP World Tour and only in one of them did he deliver a score over par (an apocalyptic gale had to blow at the Old Course at St. Andrews for that to happen, it must be said). His average score in these 38 rounds, including the three from this week, yields a truly astonishing figure: 68.36 strokes per round. In short, in the nine events he has participated in, he already boasts five top ten finishes and four top 5s, awaiting what happens tomorrow.
– Sebas García (-6) and Josele Ballester (-6), for their part, have fallen too far behind today to be included in the list of contenders for victory. Their respective cards of 72 strokes, one over par for the day, are to blame.
– However, Rocco Repetto (-8) has responded today with a notable score of 67 strokes and another electrifying round of golf, with seven birdies on the card. The young Andalusian is achieving a very high mark in his debut in a European circuit tournament, playing very aggressively and accumulating more birdies and eagles than anyone else in these first three rounds (17 birdies and two eagles), including the three co-leaders of the tournament. It’s not a fact to be overlooked: certainly, Rocco has not been intimidated in his first encounter with the top division. Tomorrow he starts five strokes behind the leaders, but with 17 players ahead of him on the leaderboard, so it’s difficult to imagine a major upset in his debut week, but he has a shot at an outstanding classification, which would be a great success and in some way smooth his path right at the start of the season (he’s just two strokes away from the top ten, for example).
– Puig and Gouveia, both in the featured group, represent the Iberian threat, so to speak, to the tremendous Australian power in this tournament. In the eight editions that the Australian PGA has counted for the DP World Tour, there have been seven Australian winners and only one from outside (Harold Varner III, who won it in 2017). It can go further: in these eight editions, a total of 42 players finished within the top 5 of the tournament, and 31 of them are Australian or New Zealanders. In fact, tomorrow nine Australians or New Zealanders will be in the last five groups. Iberia, however, is a force to be reckoned with.
