PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. _ Gary Woodland has transformed himself from a small-college basketball player to big-time golfer, from being a skinny kid to a muscular power player, from a poor putter to recently a short-game specialist. Now, he has the chance for the greatest personal migration of all.
On Sunday at the U.S. Open, he can make the quantum leap from solid professional to major champion.
With a solid putting performance, Woodland shot 2-under-par 69 in the third round and finished the day 11 under. He is one stroke ahead of Justin Rose, the 2013 U.S. Open winner with whom Woodland will play for a second consecutive day.
Rose shot 68 on another good day for scoring in the tournament that usually does not yield one double-digit under-par mark, let alone two. All of the top eight players on the leaderboard broke par Saturday. Among those is Brooks Koepka, the reigning two-time U.S. Open champion who shot 68 and is tied for third at 7 under with Louis Oosthuizen and Chez Reavie. Rory McIlroy is one stroke behind them.
Woodland made only one bogey, a five on the eighth hole, several times making clutch putts and a chip in to save par. "I felt really comfortable today, comfortable with my game," he said. "I'm excited to be where I am right now."
The feeling in the air was like that of a football Saturday, cloudy and cool. At the same time, the usually fitful seaside winds were calm enough to make the scoring seem like what you would see in the PGA Tour's relaxed fall season.
In one short burst while the leaders were on the front nine, all of this happened: Koepka just missed an eagle putt on No. 6 and had a tap-in birdie, playing partners Chesson Hadley and Matt Kuchar both eagled that same hole, Kuchar birdied No. 7 to go 8 under, Woodland made a short birdie putt on the fourth and drained an eight-footer on No. 6 to go 11 under.
When will the U.S. Open really start? Maybe the pressure of an Open Sunday will slow everyone in a way that the setup and conditions have not.
On the back nine Saturday, the top players had their struggles, but wiggled out of them. Woodland hit a shank out of a shaggy bunker lip on No. 12 and sent the ball over the green. Facing bogey, he chipped in from the fringe for par. "It looked good the whole way," he said.
Two holes later, his chopped shots on the par 5 left him with a long uphill putt for par, which he made, to stay at 11 under. Each time, Rose was unfazed enough to make birdie to go 9 under.
Woodland, 35, would not have envisioned himself with this kind of opportunity when he was a teenager. He was a basketball phenom at Shawnee Heights High School in Topeka, Kan., dreaming of being a Division I shooting guard. But big-time coaches saw him as too small and skinny, so he enrolled at Division II Washburn University. One exhibition game into his freshman season, he decided basketball just wasn't his sport. He was overmatched against his favorite school, the University of Kansas.
So, he switched to golf and took the golf scholarship that Kansas had offered earlier. Woodland, like Koepka, worked out relentlessly and transformed himself into a power player on tour.
In fact, it was always his short game that was his admitted Achilles heel. He signed on with English putting guru Phil Kenyon at the British Open last year and now considers the short strokes his strength. Kenyon gave him encouragement after Woodland's tie for eighth last month at Bethpage.
"The PGA was one of the worst weeks I'd had putting but he told me it was the best he's ever seen my stroke," Woodland said. "We had a long talk the week after the PGA about learning how to practice, changing some things with the practice and routine, because the stroke itself was really good."
It has been good enough to lead this U.S. Open in strokes-gained putting. Another day of that could make him a major champion.
