{"id":11410,"date":"2015-09-20T08:11:38","date_gmt":"2015-09-20T15:11:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/day-runs-in-place-at-bmw-but-still-leads\/"},"modified":"2015-09-20T08:11:38","modified_gmt":"2015-09-20T15:11:38","slug":"day-runs-in-place-at-bmw-but-still-leads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/day-runs-in-place-at-bmw-but-still-leads\/","title":{"rendered":"Day runs in place at BMW, but still leads"},"content":{"rendered":"

LAKE FOREST, Ill.<\/strong> \u2014 Instead of running away from the field one more time, Jason Day spent most of the third round at the BMW Championship running in place.<\/p>\n

He was hardly the only player struggling to cope with the suddenly cool, wet and windy conditions at Conway Farms left behind by a wave of overnight storms. After opening rounds of 61 and 63, the Aussie made his first bogey in 20 holes at No. 6, then piled on three more to offset a half-dozen birdies Saturday en route to a 2-under 69.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, the most difficult round that we\u2019ve had this week by far,\u201d Day said.<\/p>\n

He was at 20-under 193 and had a six-stroke lead. That\u2019s one shot better than he had at the start of the round, and the biggest cushion any 54-hole leader has enjoyed on tour this season.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think a lot of players really understood how hard it was,\u201d Day said. \u201cIt was very difficult to get anything going.\u201d<\/p>\n

Day has won three times \u2014 including his first major, the PGA Championship \u2014 and is an aggregate 99 under in tournament play since a narrow miss at the British Open in late July.<\/p>\n

While the pack pursuing the FedEx Cup leader got no closer, there was some reshuffling.<\/p>\n

Scott Piercy overcame some shaky play early to shoot a 67 and moved up from a tie for fifth into second, and a spot alongside Day in the final pairing Sunday. Brendon Todd, who played in Day\u2019s group Saturday, made a triple-bogey 7 at No. 4, bogeyed the next two and never recovered en route to a 76 that dropped him into a tie for 18th.<\/p>\n

World No.1 Rory McIlroy climbed from a tie for ninth to claim fourth place. He will go off in the next-to-last pairing with rookie Daniel Berger, one of the few players who held their ground. Berger shot 70 and was tied with Piercy for second.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe tournament is in Jason\u2019s hands right now,\u201d McIlroy said, adding a moment later, \u201che needs to come back to the field a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

That seemed like a distinct possibility midway through the third round.<\/p>\n

Day has been hitting his driver so long and straight that he rarely walks through the locker room these days without someone joking he must be playing off the ladies\u2019 tees. Maybe that\u2019s why his drives at both Nos. 13 and 15 came as such shocks.<\/p>\n

Day had barely launched his tee shot at 13 when he turned away in disgust, then headed back to his golf bag for another ball \u2014 even as his first one finally came to rest in the front yard of a home across the road from the course.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust a poor swing … I\u2019ve fought with that hole in the past,\u201d said Day, who quickly gathered himself and crushed his second drive there, then stuck a short iron from 147 yards out to within 5 feet of the pin and made that for a hard-earned bogey.<\/p>\n

At the 15th, he found plenty of trouble on the other side of the fairway, blocking his tee shot into the knee-high rough above a fairway bunker. He hacked a wedge out from there and wound up between two greenside bunkers. He used his putter from there, but wound up missing a 7-footer to save par.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust horrible,\u201d he said about the tee shot at 15. \u201cI\u2019m just trying to get something down the fairway and give myself a chance at birdie and ended walking off with a bogey.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Day said rolling in a birdie putt from 20 feet at the 18th restored some momentum and that should give his rivals pause \u2014 as if they didn\u2019t have enough to worry about.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou kind of have to look at Jason as an outlier\u201d Rickie Fowler said. \u201cRight now, it\u2019s almost like there\u2019s a secondary tournament going on, for the guys that are 8, 12 under right now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LAKE FOREST, Ill. \u2014 Instead of running away from the field one more time, Jason Day spent most of the third round at the BMW Championship running in place. He was hardly the only player struggling to cope with the suddenly cool, wet and windy conditions at Conway Farms left behind by a wave of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-11410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11410\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11410"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=11410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}