Couples Struggles At Wrong Time

Tiger Woods stood over his shot on the third hole Saturday when he backed away at the sound of a baby crying.

“Am I really playing that bad?” Woods cracked.

Not at all. The infant must have been warming up for Fred Couples and Justin Leonard.

They needed to make up ground on the leaders in the third round of the British Open and instead made pars - a great score for the U.S. Open but not much help on the relatively tame front nine of Royal Troon.

Couples shot a 1-under-par 70 and Leonard went around in 72, leaving them at 207 and five strokes behind Jesper Parnevik going into the final round today.

“I didn’t make any putts early,” Couples said. “And then you struggle.”

Leonard, who needed only six shots on the par 5s Friday when he went around in 66 and finished the second round just two strokes off the lead, took 10 shots on the same holes Saturday.

“I didn’t putt like I have been doing in the last two rounds, and I think that showed in the fact that I didn’t make a birdie until the 17th hole,” Leonard said.

Couples, who started the day four strokes behind Darren Clarke, saved an otherwise ho-hum round by holing a 6-iron from the 11th fairway for an eagle.

He could have taken his cue from Parnevik, who was three strokes behind Clarke when he began another calm, marvelous day for scoring and immediately made it a two-horse race the rest of the afternoon.

“Jesper played very well,” Couples said. “He hit a lot of birdies.”

There was the 12-foot birdie putt on No. 1, a 20-footer on the second hole and a two-putt birdie on No. 7 about 70 yards from the fairway.

“When you hole the putts, you can get a few under straight away,” Parnevik said. “It feels like all the negative thoughts have gone.”

Even Clarke took advantage. He played the front nine so well it looked like he might run away with the lead before he found trouble on the back nine, making four bogeys to finish with a 71, two strokes behind Parnevik.

What might have helped Couples and Leonard was the kind of round Woods put together - a 7-under 64 that tied Greg Norman’s course record.

“Today was a day I needed to shoot a real low number,” said Woods, who is still eight strokes behind. “I had to do it. It’s nice when everything works out just the way you want it.”