Paul Waring entered the third round of the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship with a five-stroke lead after two spectacular rounds, but a 73 on Saturday gave the rest of the field a chance to re-enter the competition.
Waring’s 54-hole total of 18-under is good enough to take a one-shot lead into the final round at Yas Links, with Niklas Norgaard of Denmark right behind him at 17-under par following a round of 69.
Tommy Fleetwood (71) of England, Shane Lowry (66) of Ireland, Denmark’s Thorbjorn Olesen (71) and Sweden’s Sebastian Soderberg (68) are tied for third at 15-under.
Waring, an Englishman, can blame his 73 on his putter. After a birdie on the second hole, he had 8 feet remaining for a birdie on the par-3 fourth hole and wound up with a bogey. He then missed birdie chances on the next nine holes before another bogey on No. 14.
“I’m a little bit disappointed. I felt like I could have put myself out of sight but four rounds of golf, you’re always going to have a bit of an iffy run of holes, an iffy round of golf,” he said. “If beginning of the week you had given me a one-shot lead going into tomorrow, I’d have snapped your hand off.
“I’m trying to remain positive that I’m still in the lead, looking forward to getting out there tomorrow.”
Six golfers are tied for seventh place at 14-under, including Belgium’s Thomas Detry, who shot a career-low 62 on the DP World Tour on a 10-birdie round. His primary goal for the week is to climb into the top 50 to move on in The Race to Dubai; he entered the week No. 63 in the standings.
He shot 72 and 68 in the first two rounds.
“It’s been a tale of three different days; I finished horrendously on Thursday, played much better yesterday and today was just kind of everything clicked together.
“I just played really well. Didn’t really miss any drivers. Pretty wide fairways out here, but I kept myself in position the whole round and obviously made a couple of great putts on my first few holes to get the momentum going and I kept going.”
Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlory, the Race to Dubai leader, sits at 13-under in a four-way tie for 13th place. He finished with a 69, but a bogey at No. 1 and a double bogey at No. 18, spoiled what could have been a stellar round.
Waring likely will need another terrific round to win Sunday, and he acknowledged he will need to control his emotions.
“I wasn’t at my best today, felt a little bit jittery in total honesty, I felt the greens were a foot-and-a-half quicker, they were breaking a bit more than what I was reading. I just struggled on them a little bit today.”
He continued: “It’s a game of golf tomorrow in the sunshine — I’m looking forward to the challenge of it now. I feel like my bad golf is out of the way now.”
