‘Phenomenal’ Scheffler surges to Memorial lead

Third-round leaderboard for Memorial Tournament

-8 S Scheffler (US), -7 B Griffin (US), -5 N Taylor (Can)

Other notables include -2 S Lowry (Irl), -2 X Schauffele (US), -3 T Fleetwood (Eng), 8 J Rose (Eng), and -9 M Fitzpatrick (Eng).

In a “challenging” third round of the Memorial Tournament in Columbus, Ohio, world number one Scottie Scheffler shot a four-under-par 68 to take the lead.

The 28-year-old American resurrected his impressive run of form, going three shots ahead of his compatriot Ben Griffin, who he had led by three early in the day.

Scheffler is chasing a third victory from his last four tournaments, so he went bogey free on Saturday, paring on the first 13 holes, and birdies the next 17 and 18 holes in style.

He held the lead on eight under overall thanks to that surge.

In his level-par 72, Griffin made five birdies and five bogeys.

Nick Taylor, from Canada, is three shots clear of the lead, while Shane Lowry, from Ireland, is in seventh place after one-over 73.

Scheffler described his low-scoring round as “incredibly difficult and proud of how I came out.”

Today’s score of par would have been a pretty good score, in my opinion, around this course.

“I felt like I could have gotten a little bit more out of the round,” he said, “but I felt like I was playing nice and a few lips here and there might have a little bit changed the score.”

I’ll be attempting to chase him down,” Taylor said of the difficulty of the title challenge against Scheffler on Sunday.