Masters Round 3: What to know as Rory McIlroy, Cameron Young lead the field

Cameron Young will be in the final group in the Masters on Sunday. Hector Vivas / Getty Images Share full article1When the sun rose Saturday morning in Augusta, Georgia, not a single player was within five shots of Masters leader Rory McIlroy. When the sun set, 11 players were at or within five of the reigning champ. A coronation looked like it might be in the cards this weekend. What a silly assumption to make about the Masters Tournament. Turns out, we’re just getting started. Here are the top numbers and notes to know from Round 3 of the 90th Masters. 1. Rory McIlroy’s record six-shot lead he carried entering the day was a one-shot deficit by the time he stepped on the 13th tee. A head-spinning four-shot swing happened in 24 minutes when McIlroy went double bogey-bogey at 11 and 12 while Cameron Young made birdie at 16. McIlroy, who had repeatedly flirted with disaster the first two days with wild tee shots, paid the price on Saturday. Through two rounds, McIlroy was 7-under with eight birdies following a missed fairway on a par four or five. Saturday, he was plus-two in those situations and failed to make a birdie. McIlroy’s 21 fairways hit aren’t just dead last in the field this week among players to make the cut; they are the fewest by a 54-hole leader at the Masters since 1990, as far back as statistics are reliably complete on the matter. McIlroy entered the day having gained two strokes or more with his approach play five times in his previous six Masters rounds. Saturday, he lost nearly four shots to the field with his approaches, the second-worst number of any player. Since the first Masters was held in 1934, Rory is the only player in the men’s game to lead a major by six shots or more after two rounds and not hold the outright lead going into Sunday. 2. Still, the opportunity is there for McIlroy to become just the fourth player to win consecutive Masters, joining Jack Nicklaus, Nick Faldo and Tiger Woods. Rory is in the final pairing Sunday at Augusta for the second consecutive year, the first player to do that since Jordan Spieth in 2015 and 2016. Co-leader Cameron Young has never previously held a 54-hole co-lead in a major, while McIlroy has held at least a share with 18 holes to play eight times, tied for fifth-most in the modern era. The historic trends are ominous, though. Seven previous times, a defending Masters champion has held the 54-hole lead or co-lead. Only two of them went on to win. McIlroy is the fourth 54-hole leader at Augusta since 2000 to have shot 73 or worse in the third round. Only one of those three – Bubba Watson in 2014 – would go on to win the green jacket. 3. Maybe all the pre-tournament forecasting is wasted breath. Apparently, everyone should just pick whoever wins The Players Championship that year to win the Masters, too. Cameron Young makes it three years in a row that the reigning winner from TPC Sawgrass the month prior is in the final pairing Sunday at Augusta National. He’d like to join Scottie Scheffler and McIlroy as the third straight Players winner to visit Butler Cabin on Sunday evening. Young shot a dazzling 65 Saturday, his lowest career round at the Masters. He missed just two fairways (with a little help from the Georgia pines on more than one occasion), tied the field-high with 16 greens in regulation and gained nearly two strokes on the field putting. A little more than eight months ago, Young was arguably the best American player to not yet win a PGA Tour event. Since then, he’s won twice, played for the U.S. in the Ryder Cup, and now could break through with his first major. Young entered the day eight shots off the lead. If he wins, he would tie the largest 36-hole comeback for any Masters champion, matching what Jack Burke, Jr. did over the final two rounds in 1956. 4. After beating McIlroy by five as his playing partner on Saturday, Sam Burns enters the final round just one shot back. Burns is in contention entering Sunday for the second time in the last three majors played – last summer, he held a one-shot lead at the U.S. Open at Oakmont. He stumbled late, though, with a double-bogey at 15, sealing his fate after he was not granted relief from a wet spot of fairway. Burns leads the field in greens in regulation, peppering ANGC at an 81.5 percent clip through two rounds. Only five players in the field have more strokes gained tee-to-green so far. And what’s typically his greatest strength, the putter, has been good too: he’s 13-of-17 on putts from five to 10 feet through three days. The LSU product, now 29, has ticked off all the boxes along his path as a world-class golfer: junior and collegiate success, five PGA Tour wins and U.S. national team appearances are all on his resume so far. His best major finish to date? That tie for seventh place last summer at Oakmont. 5. Burns is famously good friends with world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, who is unquestionably still in the picture after a career-best Masters round of 65. Scheffler enters the final round four shots back despite playing the two par fives on the second nine, 13 and 15, in 2-over so far through three rounds. Entering the week, he was a combined 23 under par on those two holes alone. Scheffler was a dozen shots off the lead to begin the third round. Should he pull off the victory Sunday, it would be the second-largest 36-hole deficit overcome to win a men’s major in history. At the 1920 Open Championship, George Duncan trailed Abe Mitchell by 13 strokes after 36 holes before coming back to win. It would also give him three green jackets in his first seven career Masters starts, breaking the record of eight shared by Palmer, Nicklaus and Woods. 6. Just two back sits Shane Lowry, who, after Saturday’s ace at the sixth hole, is the only man in Masters history to make multiple holes-in-one. Lowry’s previous ace came 10 years ago on the 16th hole in the final round. While it certainly helps your statistics to hole out from 190 yards like Lowry did Saturday, it’s not the only instance of Lowry being exemplary with his irons this week. Through three rounds, no player in the field has more strokes gained approach than the Irishman. Should Lowry receive the jacket Sunday evening from his friend McIlroy, it would mark the first time European players have won consecutive Masters titles since Danny Willett and Sergio Garcia won in 2016 and 2017. No Masters winner has made a hole-in-one the week of their victory. 7. Just three shots back, Justin Rose has another opportunity to erase decades of Augusta heartbreak. Rose shot a bogey-free 69 on Saturday, his first round at Augusta National without a dropped shot in 17 years. For the third consecutive day, Rose hit 14 of 18 greens in regulation, the 25th time he has done that in a Masters round. Since 2004, that’s seven more such rounds than any other player (Woods, 18). Saturday marks an absurd 24th time in Rose’s Masters career that he has been in the top five following a round. Since 2000, only Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods – who have combined to win eight green jackets – have more. Rose is one of two men to lose multiple Masters playoffs, and since Ben Hogan is the other member of that club, he’s the only one to do that and never win. Rose, 45, would be the oldest first-time Masters champion, set a record for most Masters starts at the time of first win (21), and be the oldest men’s major winner from Europe since Old Tom Morris won the 1867 Open Championship at age 46. His gap of 13 years between major wins (2013 U.S. Open) would be the largest such span between sequential major titles in a career, as well. 8. Eleven years after his major breakthrough at the 2015 PGA, Jason Day is within three of the lead entering the final round at the Masters for the third time. The affable Aussie rattled off four straight birdies on the second nine Saturday on his way to a 68, the 12th time in his career he’s broken 70 at Augusta National. Now 38 years old, Day is nearly a decade removed from his last days as the world’s number one-ranked player. Sunday is the first time he has been within six shots of the lead entering the final round of a major since the 2020 PGA Championship. The numbers suggest that no championship in this sport favors experience more than the Masters. Day can provide an enormous data point for that theory with a win on Sunday. 9. Five players posted bogey-free rounds Saturday, the most rounds without a dropped shot in a single Masters round in recorded history. One of them came from Patrick Cantlay, who became just the third player in the last 40 years to go bogey-free in consecutive rounds at the Masters. The field scoring average Saturday was 70.63, the lowest third round in Masters history. It’s the third time that Round 3 has yielded a field average under 71. The other two years, 1986 and 2019, preceded historic Masters Sundays. 10. Each of the last nine Masters champions have come from the final pairing on Sunday, the last exception being Willett in 2016. That goes for 30 of the last 35 tournament winners, too. In 89 past Masters tournaments, the winner has been within five entering the final round 84 times. The largest 54-hole comeback to win the Masters is eight strokes, by Jack Burke, Jr., 70 years ago. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Justin Ray is a contributor at The Athletic and the Head of Content for Twenty First Group, a sports intelligence agency that works with players, broadcasters, manufacturers and media. He has been in sports media for more than 10 years and was previously a senior researcher for ESPN and Golf Channel. Follow Justin on Twitter @JustinRayGolf