Akshay Bhatia takes 2-shot lead into final round at Pebble Beach

Akshay Bhatia said he knows the task won’t be easy as he deals with the windy conditions in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

Bhatia shot 4-under-par 68 in the third round on Saturday to carry a two-stroke lead into the final round at Pebble Beach, Calif.

Bhatia lost some of his commanding lead by playing the final seven holes at 2 over after a sizzling start at windy Pebble Beach Golf Links.

“It’s brutal,” Bhatia said of the unpredictable winds. “It’s just so hard to get settled in, especially when it gets late in the day.”

He’s at 19-under 197 heading to Sunday. He leads or co-leads a tournament for the fourth time after 54 holes, with a victory in one of the three previous situations.

“I’m excited for (Sunday) no matter what the challenge is,” Bhatia said. .”.. (Sunday) is going to be hard for everyone.”

With tee times moved up due to an inclement weather forecast, golfers will tee off in threesomes for the final round using No. 1 and No. 10 as starting holes.

Collin Morikawa made a big move, shooting 62 to share second place with Jake Knapp (66) and Austria’s Sepp Straka (67). Jacob Bridgeman (68) is in fifth place at 16 under and Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama (67), who played without a bogey in the third round, is sixth at 15 under.

Bhatia, who was the tournament’s leader at the midway mark through Friday, began with birdies on six of the first seven holes Saturday. He finished with a par on the last hole after bogeying the 12th and 17th holes.

“Happy to make 5 on (No.) 18 with how the weather was,” Bhatia said.

The top six golfers on the leaderboard have played all three rounds with sub-70 scores.

That comes with increasingly tough conditions as winds are impacting nearly every shot, including putts.

“Any of those back pins, it gets really tough to fly it all the way back there,” Knapp said.

Morikawa’s 10-under round Saturday came with 11 birdies and one bogey. He hit every green in regulation, something he had done only twice previously on the PGA Tour.

The last golfer to hit every green in regulation at Pebble Beach Golf Links was Bhatia in the first round of the 2021 tournament.

Knapp’s round included eagles on Nos. 1 and 18. He became the first golfer in a non-major at Pebble Beach Golf Links to bookend a round with eagles.

“Starting your day out with a hole-out like that isn’t what you expect,” Knapp said, referring to his fairway shot from 130 yards out finding the cup on the par-4 layout.

He sank a putt from about 13 feet away for the eagle on the last hole.

Straka, who led after the second and third rounds of the tournament last year, notched six birdies on the back nine Saturday.

“Once we turned to the back, I got the wind off to my left and was able to kind of hook it into the breeze,” Straka said. “I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but it worked out.”

Defending champion Rory McIlroy isn’t in contention after Saturday’s 72 put him at 9 under and tied for 39th place.

–Field Level Media