While the skies were clear Saturday at Valhalla, it continued to rain birdies in buckets.
And while some may bemoan the record-breaking scores, the leaderboard this venue has produced with one round to play in the 106th PGA Championship is undeniably strong. Fifteen players, many of them among the most accomplished in the game today, are within five shots of the lead heading into the final day.
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Here are the top numbers and notes to know from Round 3 of the PGA Championship.
1. At 15 under par, Collin Morikawa is tied for the lead entering the final round of a major for the first time in his career. After missing each of his first three greens in regulation Saturday, Morikawa hit 12 of 15 the rest of the way, carding just a single bogey in his round. Renowned as one of the top iron players in the sport, Morikawa is tied for the lead despite ranking 24th in the field in strokes gained approach through three rounds. Instead, it’s been an excellent short game that’s led his charge; he tops the field this week in strokes gained around the green.
Morikawa is looking for his third career major championship victory in his 18th major start. It has been nearly 47 years since a player reached three major wins in 18 attempts or fewer. The last to do it was Tom Watson, who got his third major title in his 17th career start at the 1977 Open. Brooks Koepka and Tiger Woods won their third major in start No. 20, while Jordan Spieth did it in 19.
The only player in the PGA Championship stroke-play era (since 1958) to win the PGA Championship twice in his first five tries is Woods. Morikawa can join him with a win Sunday.
2. Xander Schauffele was cruising atop the leaderboard most of the day until a double bogey at 15, his only dropped shot of the afternoon. The world No. 3 bounced back admirably, though, making birdie at 17 and 18 to tie Morikawa entering the final round. This is the second time Schauffele has led entering the final round of a major — he shared the lead entering the final round at Carnoustie in the 2018 Open.
Schauffele, who led outright after each of the first two rounds, is the seventh man since 2000 to hold a share of the lead after Rounds 1, 2 and 3 at a PGA Championship. Four of the previous six went on to win. This is the fourth time in Schauffele’s career that he has been in the top five entering Sunday at a major — he did not break par in the final round in any of the previous three instances.
3. On the biggest stage in his young career, Sahith Theegala (-14, 1 back) acquitted himself extremely well Saturday. His reward is a prime opportunity to win his first major championship. The 26-year-old Pepperdine product was 2 over through eight holes before catching fire, playing his last 10 in 6 under. Theegala is third in the field in putting through three rounds this week, picking up more than eight strokes on the field on the greens.
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This will be just the sixth major championship Sunday for Theegala, and the first time he has teed it up in one of those rounds starting better than tied for 20th. His best finish in his eight previous major championships was a solo ninth at the 2023 Masters, when he closed with 67.
4. Shane Lowry shot the fifth round of 62 in men’s major championship history, the second this week and the fourth in the last 11 months. Lowry has lit up the greens at Valhalla, making a field-best 14 putts of 10 feet or longer. Lowry has gained nearly 11 strokes putting this week, far and away the most of anyone through three rounds in any PGA Tour event in 2024. His more than 5.97 strokes gained putting Saturday alone are a career high in any round.
Lowry started the third round eight shots off the lead, in a tie for 29th place. Should he go on to win, it would be the largest 36-hole comeback by position in PGA Championship history and tie the second largest across all men’s majors. Only David Duval’s, after he was in a tie for 35th entering Round 3 of the 2001 Open at Royal Lytham, would be bigger. Lowry is trying to join Padraig Harrington and Rory McIlroy as the only European players to win an Open Championship and a PGA.
5. Bryson DeChambeau celebrated an eagle on the closing hole Saturday with an emphatic fist pump and matching roar. The chip-in puts him two shots off the lead entering the final round, the same deficit he faced in 2020 at Winged Foot when he won the U.S. Open. The powerful DeChambeau leads the field this week in driving distance, which is exactly what Tiger Woods (2000) and Rory McIlroy (2014) did when they left Valhalla with the Wanamaker Trophy.
This marks the first time DeChambeau has ever started a major championship with three consecutive rounds in the 60s. Should he win, he would be just the third player to win the U.S. Amateur, U.S. Open and PGA Championship, joining Woods and Jack Nicklaus.
Bryson DeChambeau EAGLES on 18 😱
He's ONE BACK off the lead!pic.twitter.com/9vODJiMbXF
— PGA Championship (@PGAChampionship) May 18, 2024
6. The field averaged -1.45 strokes under par Saturday, the lowest single round in relation to par in PGA Championship history. In fact, it was just the third round in this championship’s history where the field was a stroke or more under par on average. Three of them have come at Valhalla GC — the third round in 2000 (-1.00) and the third round in 2014 (-1.43) being the other two.
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Twenty-eight players shot scores of 3 under or better Saturday, the second most in a single PGA Championship round after a cut has been made. In 2015 at Whistling Straits, 30 players shot 3 under or lower in Round 3. Jason Day would go on to win that week, posting the first score of 20 under or lower in men’s major championship history.
7. Reports surfaced earlier in the week that reigning FedExCup champion Viktor Hovland had started working again with his previous swing coach, Joe Mayo. The on-course results have been quick and staggeringly good. Hovland is just two shots off the lead entering the final round and looks closer to his soaring superstar form of 2023 than what he’d put on film to date this year.
The ebullient Norwegian entered the week ranked 122nd on the PGA Tour in strokes gained tee-to-green in 2024 and 81st in strokes gained approach. He’s seventh and 11th in those two metrics this week. Saturday was the first bogey-free round of his PGA Championship career and fourth across all the majors. This is the fifth time in the last seven majors contested that Hovland will be in the top five entering the final round.
Two of Hovland’s European Ryder Cup teammates should not be discounted as we head to the final round. Robert MacIntyre is three shots back, looking to become the first Scottish major winner in the men’s game since Paul Lawrie at the 1999 Open Championship. Justin Rose fired a third-round 64, tying his career-low score across 267 major championship rounds. Rose, 43, is the oldest player from outside the United States to shoot 64 or lower at the PGA Championship since Gary Player in 1984.
8. After a second consecutive round of 67, hometown favorite Justin Thomas is five shots off the lead heading into Sunday. JT was multiple shots back entering the final round in each of his two PGA wins (two back in 2017, seven in 2022). The last player to win each of his first three majors when trailing by at least two strokes through 54 holes was Harrington. Thomas leads the tournament in strokes gained tee-to-green but ranks a dismal 70th in strokes gained putting.
Four-time major winner McIlroy and three-time major champ Spieth are seven shots back and will need a minor miracle to win Sunday. A seven-shot comeback has happened twice, by Thomas in 2022 and John Mahaffey at Oakmont in 1978. In Spieth’s eight PGA Championship starts since winning the third leg of the grand slam, seven strokes ties the smallest deficit he has faced after 54 holes.
9. The game’s two best performers in major championships in recent seasons, Scottie Scheffler and Brooks Koepka, both struggled Saturday.
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Scheffler shot a 2-over-par 73, his first score worse than par in an official event since the Tour Championship in August. Scheffler’s unlikely day included a double bogey-bogey-bogey run on holes 2 through 4. Incredibly, it was the first time in 646 days that Scheffler made bogey or worse on three consecutive holes. In the span between when it last happened — the 2022 St. Jude Championship — Scheffler played 2,470 holes on Tour.
Koepka wobbled to a third-round 74, falling out of contention in his title defense. Saturday was the 149th round of Koepka’s major championship career. It’s just the sixth time he shot a score four shots or more worse than the field average. Koepka did not make a birdie until the 17th hole Saturday and lost more than 2.4 strokes on the greens alone in his round.
10. In the men’s game, 40 of the last 41 major winners have been within four shots of the lead entering the final round. The lone exception in that span was Thomas at Southern Hills two years ago in this championship. Since 2000, every men’s major winner has been tied for ninth or better on the leaderboard with one round to play. Eighty-one percent of the winners in that span were either first, second or third.
(Top photo of Sahith Theegala: Christian Petersen / Getty Images)