NEWS AND NOTES FROM SATURDAY

VERONA – It’s not a lock that either Matt Kuchar or Scott Piercy will win, even though they lead after 54-holes. This year on the PGA Tour, the third-round leader/co-leader has gone on to win 22 of 40 events (55%) this season. Dustin Johnson, last year’s Turning Stone winner, won the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am when it was reduced to 54 holes while Pat Perez won the Bob Hope Classic, a five-round event.

Piercy is a rookie and has had a pair of top-10 finishes in his first six Tour starts, but has not had a top-20 finish since. He finished T6 at the FBR Open in February and T5 at the Honda Classic in March.
 
Just so you know, no rookie has won on Tour this year – something that hasn’t happened since 1998. Dustin Johnson was a rookie when he won at Turning Stone last year.  He won it last year coming from two strokes back. He enters the final round six strokes back of leaders.So is Charles Howell III, who shared the 54-hole lead with Tag Ridings last year, and finished T3.

The overnight rainfall total was three-quarters of an inch, so for the third consecutive day preferred lies “through the green” were allowed.

As the weather improved, 56 of the 75 players in the field scored below par in the third round. 34 scored in the 60s.
 
Kuchar missed the cut in his only other appearance at the Turning Stone Resort Championship in 2007. With a top-25 finish this week, Kuchar will set a personal-best with nine for the season. He recorded eight top-25s last year.

 
18 Australians started this tournament and three missed the cut (Robert Allenby, Marc Leishman and Mathew Goggin. Rod Pampling (T3) and John Senden (T10) are the only Aussies in the top 10 after 54 holes. Eighteen Australian’s teed it up this week and 15 advanced to the weekend.

Sweden’s Mathias Gronberg’s 64 equaled his season-low round and also tied the Atunyote course record shot by Jarrod Lyle and Jeff Maggert, both in round two of 2007. The last time Gronberg shot 64 on the PGA Tour was round two of the 2008 Wyndham Championship, although he did shoot 64 in the fourth round of the 2008 PGA Tour Qualifying Tournament. Gronberg jumped from T51 to T10. Gronberg entered this week No. 194 on the money list having only made four cuts in 11 starts.

Davis Love III shot 66 in the third round for the second consecutive year. The winner of 20 PGA TOUR events, including the 1997 PGA Championship, finished T3 here in 2008. Love played in six of seven Fall Series events in 2008 posting three top-10s including a win at the Children’s Miracle Network Classic,the final event of the season.

Adam Scott (68-70-70) shot a 1-under 70 in the final round of The Barclays and has now posted his fourth consecutive sub-par round on Tour. He has 19 of 51 rounds (37%) under-par this season. Scott has made 17 birdies through 54 holes this week.

Michael Allen has posted seven bogeys in 54 holes, all coming on par-4 holes. Allen, the runner-up at Atunyote in 2007 when he posted 69-67-68-68, stands alone as the only player to have scored all four rounds in the 60s in each of the first two years at Turning Stone. The newly-minted 50-year-old this year won the 2009 Senior PGA Championship after receiving a sponsor’s invitation to compete and is now fully exempt on the Champions Tour and the PGA Tour.

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