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Report on the third day of the Texas Children’s Houston Open

Houston, we have everything and certainly no problem…

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Scottie Scheffler. © Golffile | Eoin Clarke
Scottie Scheffler. © Golffile | Eoin Clarke

The Texas Children’s Houston Open is proving to be this year, in the current edition, a real gem in the colourful calendar of world golf. It has everything. Starting with a course, the Memorial Park, which is hosting its third edition as the venue for the event after the course’s remodelling and which is a sensational setting that truly tests these great players (especially if it has the help of the wind, as is happening), without there apparently being a need to tighten the screws to limits that may border on neurosis.

The tournament has everything, we were saying. We have in Houston, for example, five leaders squeezed at the top of the table, each of a different nationality: an Englishman, David Skinns (-9); a German, Stephan Jaeger (-9); a Belgian, Thomas Detry (-9); an Argentine, Alejandro Tosti (-9)… And an American, of course, who is none other than the World Number One, Scottie Scheffler (-9), who is seeking his third consecutive victory.

We have, by the way, for the last and decisive round, twelve players separated by a slim margin of two strokes. And more than twenty who will start with a difference of five.

We also have fighting for the victory again Nick Dunlap (-8), the young man who won as an amateur a few weeks ago and who aspires to repeat the upset, now as a professional. And we have him there because today he has signed an outstanding card of 63 strokes, hovering around the course record.

Tomorrow, for sure, we will have the same as we have had today: a classification that does not stop, full of alternatives. And an end of the course that takes your breath away, with numerous and varied risk-reward situations and with special mention to what happened this Saturday at hole 15, a par 3 that today was only 120 meters long and where the drama was never far from the surface (Scheffler, for example, came out of there with a double bogey on his back). Isn’t it already sufficiently demonstrated that the best players in the world can be tickled without resorting to extreme length? The most famous par 3s in the world, for example, usually do not go beyond 130 meters… And if they are famous it is because the drama hovers over the green, make no mistake.

We have a David Skinns who refuses to be a one-day wonder, a withered Cinderella. This player with a discreet record was in the star match of the last round a few weeks ago at the Cognizant in Florida and will do so again tomorrow, breaking through as an extraordinary golfer in his forties. We have a rookie like Tosti up there, who today has overcome a neck muscle ailment to keep pushing. We have Detry, a permanent candidate for excellence…

For having, we still have in the fight a Tony Finau (-7), the outstanding leader at the start of the day, despite the fact that today he has been surpassed by Memorial Park (card of 72 strokes). We have Jaeger, eager to stop being a recurring animator, and Taylor Moore (-8), who last year, at last, seemed to have set course for another dimension, that of the very good, and then did not finish confirming the vertiginous jump. We have Askhay Bathia (-8), another one who is still looking for permission to enter the hall of the great players…

We have Scheffler, if the insistence is allowed. Again up there, with the best, fighting for the victory. Again in a star match on Sunday. Today he was taking everything in his path, like a stampede of bison (five birdies between holes 6 and 12), then he stopped dead (bogey on 13 and double bogey on 15), then he putted for eagle on 16 and hit a great shot on 17 (birdie)… He does not feel completely at ease, among other things because this course does not give respite, he has already thrown three balls into the water in the last two rounds, he has signed painful double bogeys (before the first one fell this week in Houston he had 218 holes to sign not one), everything you want, but there we have him, co-leader. He is a supreme player, a headache for anyone who coincides with him in a golf tournament and aspires to win it.

Tomorrow Sunday is also expected to be windy. And we will surely have a dramatic finish. And maybe some unexpected outsider who goes ahead and who has not yet been named, capable of signing a 63 like Dunlap’s. And we will surely have Scheffler, coming and going. Fortunately.

Live results of the Texas Children’s Houston Open