Confident Anirban Lahiri blazes through front nine at Memorial; Tiger Woods lies seventh

PTI

Anirban Lahiri has changed another putter and feels his confidence is slowly building up once again as he shot a 3-under 69 in the third round of the Memorial Tournament.

For Lahiri it was a tale of two nines, as he shot five-under on the front nine but slumped to 2-over 38 that still moved him 14 places up. Lahiri is now T-21 at 7-under.

India's other challenger this week, Shubhankar Sharma had earlier missed the cut.

Bryson DeChambeau fired a 6-under 66 that included birdies on two of the toughest holes to take a one-shot lead going into a final round. DeChambeau missed two short putts but was still 14-under 202.

He missed a 3-foot birdie putt on the ninth hole, and then missed a birdie putt from 4 feet on the par-5 15th.

DeChambeau led over Kyle Stanley (70), Patrick Cantlay and the 19-year-old Chilean Joaquin Niemann.

"I can feel the confidence building back, slowly but steadily. A change of putter this week has been an important move. Also coming back to familiar turf this week helps," said Lahiri.

"It felt good to be on a roll on the front nine, but was quite disappointed not to convert it into a round in mid-60s.

"I am working on improving my thought process on the golf course and some other baby steps in different directions, so I feel I am definitely building myself into a good mental state.

"Hopefully I can go low on Sunday like I did last year (with a 65)," he added.

Lahiri was Tied-second at the Memorial last year, which to date is his best finish on the PGA Tour.

The focus once again the focus was Tiger Woods (68) who is in the mix at Muirfield Village for the first time in six years. At 9-under he was 5-behind, but his form was brilliant despite his putting let him down again.

Asked if he was ready for win, Woods said, "Well, I was at 11-under par, and I had wasted a bunch of shots the last two days and I was 4-over par in the first round, so you do the math."

Lahiri was on fire on the front nine. He opened birdie-birdie with the second one coming from 80 feet and off the green. After missing putts from 10 feet and 14 feet on next two holes, he birdied fifth with a nice first putt from over 50 feet.

A bogey on sixth after finding the fairway halted him. Yet he went on a birdie spree on seventh, eighth and ninth, the last one from almost 20 feet.

After six birdies against one bogey on front nine, Lahiri went into right rough on 10th and made bogey and on 11th he went into water.

He again missed the fairway on 17th and ended with a bogey, but made pars on 16th and 18th, the two toughest holes on the course.