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US Open round three leaderboard

-4 Burns (US); -3 Spaun (US), Scott (Aus); -1 Hovland (Nor), Lawrence (SA); Level Ortiz (Mex); +1 Hatton (Eng); +2 Neergaard-Petersen (Den), +3 MacIntyre (Sco), Young (US)

Selected others: +4 Scheffler (US); +5 Wallace (Eng), Koepka (US); +6 Spieth (US); +7 Schauffele (US), Rahm (Spa); +8 Canter (Eng); +9 Fitzpatrick (Eng); +10 McIlroy

America’s Sam Burns will take a one-shot lead into Sunday’s final round of the US Open after a terrific finish to the third round at Oakmont.

The 28-year-old world number 22 carded three birdies and two bogeys in his one-under 69 as he maintained his overnight lead and moved to four under par.

Playing partner JJ Spaun was level with Burns for much of the round but bogeyed the final hole to end the day as he started it, one shot back.

Alongside Spaun at three under par, 2013 Masters champion Adam Scott made a decisive move on the back nine to stake his claim for a second major title at 44 years old.

The only player in the top 10 to have previously won one of golf’s biggest four tournaments, the Australian birdied the 13th and 14th holes before draining a 15-foot birdie putt on the 17th to briefly tie the lead.

His round of three-under 67 was joint best in the field – alongside Mexico’s Carlos Ortiz who improved to level par – and earned him a spot in the final group on Sunday.

Norway’s Viktor Hovland remains a threat. He hit two trees and a flagstick on his way to a level-par 70 and produced a wondrous shot out of the rough on 17 to find a bonus birdie.

England’s Tyrrell Hatton and Scotland’s Robert MacIntyre both impressed in their search for a first major title and are at one over and three over par respectively.

Soggy conditions changed the dynamic of the course but not the difficulty as Burns and Spaun traded blows in the final group.

Both are winners on the PGA Tour but they also share play-off defeats this season – Spaun at The Players Championship by Rory McIlroy in March and Burns only last week on the fourth play-off hole as Ryan Fox won the Canadian Open.

The two briefly swapped places at the beginning of the round but were level for the majority of Saturday and both picked up birdies on the 17th to move clear of Scott on four under.

But Spaun, who still boasts the only bogey-free round of the week on Thursday, hit an erratic tee shot at the 18th. That led to a bogey and cost him a place in Sunday’s final group.

That spot alongside Burns will be filled by Scott, who is making his 96th consecutive appearance at a major championship.

His second shot at the 14th was sublime, landing a foot from the pin, and his fist-pump celebration to raucous cheers after making birdie on 17 showed his heart – and popularity – remain undimmed.

On Friday, Scott said a second major title would “go a long way” in fulfilling himself. He is well placed to make that happen on Sunday.

And do not discount Hovland, who came within inches of hitting his opening drive out of bounds, but retained his composure to produce a typically swashbuckling round that featured three birdies and three bogeys.

Hatton has often demonstrated the skills required to win a major, and yet he has only one top-five finish in 40 appearances.

An excellent round of 68 on Saturday left him seventh, five shots behind Burns, and it could have been even better had a monster eagle putt not drifted inches past the 17th hole.

He dismissed suggestions not having previously won a major will affect the contenders.

“It’s another golf tournament, and you’re playing against a lot of the guys week in, week out,” he said. “You have to trust that you can compete and beat anyone.”

European Ryder Cup team-mate MacIntyre retains that belief after carding four birdies and three bogeys in his round of 69.

“I’m just delighted to be in it,” he said. “If I shoot the number I know I can shoot, then why not me?”

One further back, Scheffler remains a presence but is yet to find his best form this week, summed up by an ugly missed par putt from two feet at the eighth.

At least he remains somewhat in touch.

The 2021 US Open champion Jon Rahm’s challenge came unstuck after playing the back nine in four over. At seven over par he is surely too far away to threaten. Alongside the Spaniard is world number three Xander Schauffele, who has finished inside the top 15 in all eight of his previous US Open appearances.

As for Masters champion McIlroy, a bogey at the 18th capped another testing day and left him “waiting for my week to end”.

Canadian Grand Prix

Venue: Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, Montreal Date: 15 June Race start: 19:00 BST on Sunday

Max Verstappen said Formula 1 was “annoying” and that questions about him racing under the threat of a race ban were “childish”.

The Red Bull driver, who qualified second for Sunday’s Canadian Grand Prix, will be contesting the lead at the start of the race with Mercedes’ George Russell, who took pole position.

Verstappen deliberately drove into the Briton at the last race in Spain and a resulting penalty has left him one licence point short of a race ban.

Asked about this at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve on Saturday, the Dutchman said: “I don’t need to hear it again. You were speaking about it on Thursday.

Russell’s pole was his first of the season and he referenced Verstappen’s predicament in the context of their prospective battle for the lead in the race.

“We’re mates so it’s all good,” Russell said with a smile on his face. “I have a few more points on my licence to play with, so let’s see.”

Verstappen, who has said the incident in Spain was “not right and shouldn’t have happened”, said in his news conference on Thursday that the threat of a ban would not change the way he raced.

“I cannot just back out of everything,” he said. “I’m just going to race like I always do. I trust myself.”

The incident in Spain was not the first moment of tension between Verstappen and Russell.

They had a public row at the end of last season, in which Verstappen was unhappy with what he perceived as Russell trying to get him a penalty at the Qatar Grand Prix. Russell was offended by Verstappen’s comments in a conversation afterwards.

They exchanged criticisms of each other in public, including Russell calling Verstappen a bully and Verstappen saying Russell was a backstabber.

Russell said his pole lap was “probably one of the most exhilarating laps of my life” and that it had given him “goosebumps”.

The Briton let a victory slip through his fingers after taking pole in Canada last year and said he wanted to make amends for that.

“Last year was a poor race for me,” he said, “and I felt it could’ve gone differently. So obviously I’ll be doing my best to make up for last year’s losses.

“But it’s totally different this year. We don’t know how the race is going to pan out because the hard tyre is the one that we’re all going to use at some point in the race, and no one knows if that would do the distance to give you a one-stop or not. So, there’s that curveball in there.”

Mercedes’ improved performance is down to the combination of relatively cool temperatures at just over 20C and a low-abrasion track that enables their car to keep its tyre temperatures down.

But Russell said he was wary of how the car might perform in Sunday’s race.

“We had good race pace on Friday, but it depends on the temperature,” he said. “In practice, it was 5C cooler than it was today, and the car was easily in its sweet spot.

The track characteristics have the opposite effect on championship leaders McLaren, whose car is the best in the field at managing tyre temperatures.

As a consequence, McLaren have been struggling to make it operate at its best in Montreal.

Championship leader Oscar Piastri is third on the grid behind Russell and Verstappen but his team-mate and title rival Lando Norris could manage only seventh, admitting that he had made two mistakes in the final session of qualifying.

Norris said: “I think we can go forwards anyway, but not a lot. You know, it’s not like we’re easy one-two, like we have been on other tracks.

“It’s just very low grip, first of all is one of the bigger things. And therefore the car balance just never comes together as much as what it does in other tracks.

“Probably just low grip and some of the kerb-riding and bumps, which just hurts us, it seems, more than some others.”

Norris was using a revised front suspension layout that was designed to increase the feel from the front axle of the car, the lack of which the Briton believes is important in the flip in form between himself and Piastri between last year and this.

Norris said it was “tough to say” whether this had improved the feeling coming from the car.

“This track, everything just feels different,” he said. “So I think it’s something we’ll have to wait and see on the next few races through Austria and Silverstone and so forth to understand and maybe back-to-back tests between them both.

“It’s nothing that I’ve felt just yet. But it’s more that when you go to a new track, it’s hard to remember everything perfectly relative to other tracks. So we just need a bit more time to understand if it’s any better or not.”

Piastri stuck with the old layout, saying: “It’s not an upgrade. It’s a different part. It changes some things, some things are better, some things are worse. I have been happy with how the car has been this year.”

Team principal Andrea Stella said: “From Lando’s point of view, there were no downsides. If anything, despite the result that we had in Q3 with Lando, pretty much right away, Lando has actually been competitive, especially compared to Oscar throughout the weekend.

Rory McIlroy says he has “earned the right to do whatever I want to do” after skipping media duties following his opening two rounds during what he called a “pretty average” US Open performance.

The Masters champion spoke to the media for the first time since the tournament started after Saturday’s four-over 74 pushed him back to 10 over par after three rounds.

McIlroy said he hoped Sunday’s final round will be a case of taking “four and a half hours and out of here” to put a disappointing week behind him.

The 36-year-old has cut a frustrated figure throughout the tournament at Oakmont, only just making the cut on Friday.

And, after Saturday’s round, he said making himself less available to some sections of the media is partly due to a story leaked surrounding his driver before last month’s PGA Championship.

It emerged the United States Golf Association (USGA) instructed McIlroy to change the club just two days before the event after an equipment inspection deemed it ‘non-conforming’. There was no suggestion that McIlroy had done anything wrong.

“It’s just frustration with you guys [some sections of the media],” the Northern Irishman said in his first post-round interview at a major since winning the Masters at Augusta in April.

“I have been totally available for the past number of years,” McIlroy added. “That [driver issue] was a part of it but at Augusta I skipped you guys on Thursday. It’s not out of the ordinary as I’ve done it before, but I am doing it a little more often. I feel like I’ve earned the right to do whatever I want to do.”

The Oakmont course has proved to be a challenge for the entire field and, although McIlroy has been happy with some aspects of his game, retaining focus has been an issue at times.

“The name of the game this week is staying patient and I’ve tried to do a good job of it out there, but it’s just one of those golf courses where you can lose patience pretty quickly,” he said.

McIlroy said he has felt “a little bit flat on the golf course” since his Masters triumph in April, which saw him become the sixth player to complete a career Grand Slam of winning all four majors.

Naturally, he is keen to achieve further success, but knew from his slow start to Friday’s second round that any chance of collecting a second major of the year this week was gone.

With the shackles off a little, he produced a good finish to squeeze into the weekend action, but was unable to carry that into Saturday as he finished four over for the day.

McIlroy acknowledged anything short of a top performance would be punished on the course.

“It’s much easier when you’re on the cut line when you don’t really care if you’re here for the weekend or not,” he added of Friday’s effort.

“I was thinking, ‘do I want another two days here or not?’, but it makes it easier to play when you’re in that mindset.

“I’ve certainly experienced times when I haven’t played the way I wanted to. I actually feel like I’ve played OK this week, but it’s just the sort of golf course where the tiniest mistakes get penalised a lot and that’s how it’s felt.

Manchester United look at options in case Bryan Mbuemo deal falls through, Arsenal still keen on Viktor Gyokeres, Mathys Tel poised for permanent move to Spurs.

Manchester United will turn their attentions to signing Bournemouth’s Ghana forward Antoine Semenyo, 25, or Crystal Palace’s England midfielder Eberechi Eze, 26, if they fail to land Brentford’s Cameroon attacker Bryan Mbuemo, 25. (ESPN)

Arsenal are poised to return with another bid for Sporting’s Sweden striker Viktor Gyokeres, 27, with Atletico Madrid also interested in the player. Gyokeres has already ruled out a move to Manchester United. (Record – in Portuguese)

Tottenham Hotspur are expected to make the signing of Bayern Munich forward Mathys Tel, 20, permanent following his loan spell, with the deal soon to be finalised. (Bild – in German)

AC Milan have made contact with Valencia over a move for 22-year-old midfielder Javi Guerra (Calciomercato – in Italian)

Inter Milan are ready to listen to offers for midfielder Hakan Calhanoglu, 31, with Galatasaray expressing interest in his signature. (Gazetta – in Italian)

Southampton are considering a move for Cologne’s United States striker Damion Downs, 20. (Sky Germany)

Set-piece coach Keith Andrews is a candidate to replace Thomas Frank as Brentford manager. (Talksport)

Spanish attacking midfielder Fer Lopez, 21, has agreed to join Wolverhampton Wanderers from Celta Vigo but the clubs have still to agree a fee, with some confusion surrounding the player’s release clause. (Diario AS – in Spanish)

Bayer Leverkusen want Netherlands forward Justin Kluivert after selling Germany midfielder Florian Wirtz, 22, to Liverpool and have approached Bournemouth about the 26-year-old’s availability. (Mail)

West Ham have held talks over a move for Gambia forward Adama Bojang, 21, from French side Reims and could land the player for £11m. (Mirror)

Bournemouth have agreed a deal to sign defender Adrien Truffert, 23, from Rennes, which will allow the Cherries’ Hungary left-back Milos Kerkez, 21, to complete his move to Liverpool. (ESPN)