Three co-leaders have remained in the Commercial Bank Qatar Masters after the third day, waiting for the final round: the Japanese Rikuya Hoshino (-10), the French Ugo Coussaud (-10) and the Dane Rasmus Hojgaard (-10), with the latter two, Gallic and Nordic, who have rowed more and better this Saturday to reach such a privileged position, with both records of 67 strokes.
The thing is that, in reality, once again, this tournament is very open with the last 18 holes left. Up to 31 players are going to start within a margin of five strokes. And we already know what happens in good competition courses at the highest level, as is the case of the Doha Golf Club course: on the one hand, they give opportunities to those who play very well; on the other hand, they can also close all the doors to those who are more out of tune. This second is what happened today, for example, to Haydn Barron (-7), the Australian who started today as a solo leader and has signed a 74, or to his compatriot and stellar match partner, Harrison Endycott (-3) who delivered a 76…
And once again, not to miss a tradition that has already fulfilled sixteen consecutive editions of this tournament, from 2009 to this week, we are going to have one or several Spanish players coming out five or less strokes from the head. In this case there are several and they will also come out less than five strokes from the three co-leaders: on the one hand, Alex del Rey (-6) and Nacho Elvira (-6), who are not close, but also not discarded; and on the other Jorge Campillo (-7), who will take a step closer to the head and who is of course fully involved in the group of candidates. The problem that the three have, especially Del Rey and Elvira, is that they have a lot of people ahead, all crowded and waiting for the final claw. But real options, there are. “It’s complicated because of all the people there are in such a small margin, but it’s not impossible, not at all,” says Campillo. “It was a shame not to have gained more momentum on holes 7, 8 and 9, where I had very puttable birdie putts all three. Afterwards, the truth is that I saw myself with a lot of grit, especially on the 15th…”
The hole 15 of Campillo certainly deserves a separate comment. There, after a bad exit on the left, the Extremaduran found the ball stuck in a bush, or in a bush, to understand us better, but he managed to make a decent contact and even gain meters. Then he hit the iron 8 and holed a putt from about six meters to sign a miraculous par on the hardest hole of the course. It’s not just the fact of getting out of there without punishment, but the moment it was, since the Spanish player brought the round very stopped, was already very far from the leading positions, and a debacle at this point could have been fatal. However, he came out alive from the ambush and finished with three consecutive birdies to completely transform the panorama of his Sunday round.
The story of Del Rey can almost be told backwards. The Madrid player was launched after a series of three birdies on holes 7, 8 and 9, topped off with an eagle on the 10th, and yet the last third of the round slowed down all the momentum (bogeys on holes 15 and 17), although a late birdie on the 18th put him back in certain equations for the final victory.
The hole 15 has risen today as a real wall for the Armada. There Campillo sweated blood and Del Rey lost momentum, as has been said, but there also fell a bogey to Elvira and, what is worse, there slipped a Sebas García (-4) who was launched from the first matches of the day, and a Pablo Larrazábal (-4) who was already doing his thing and getting into the last matches on Sunday, both scoring a painful double bogey after missing the exit and both going into the water with the second shot. It is not necessary to point out that, although Sebas and Pablo do not seem to have real options for victory, they can become something more than animators of the last round.
