Champions:
Patrick Reed was befuddled by the wind when his golf ball was in the air, and by his notebook when his ball was on the green. He went back to playing aggressively, and it gave him the lead Saturday in the Wells Fargo Championship.
Reed hammered a wedge into 4 feet for birdie on the 17th, and finished with a twoputt birdie for a 5-under 67 to match the low score of a blustery third round at Wilmington, N.C. He totaled 8-under 208, good for a oneshot lead over Alex Noren and Jon Rahm going into the final round at Eagle Point.
Top-ranked Dustin Johnson, competing for the first time since his slip down the stairs bruised his back and knocked him out of the Masters, rallied for a 67 and was four shots out of the lead in a bid for his fourth straight PGA Tour victory. He narrowly made the cut after shooting 75 Friday.
In a scramble for the top — 18 players are separated by four shots after 54 holes — Reed finished strong.
His lone bogey came at the 14th when he tried to finesse a 51-degree wedge in the wind and hit 40 feet by the hole, leading to a three-putt. He had the same yardage (134) on the 17th hole and learned from his mistake. He asked for the 57-degree wedge with the idea of smashing it.
“I’ll hit it hard and hopefully be able to get it up there, and it ended up working out perfectly,” Reed said.
He also quit relying so much on his book that shows every tiny movement on the green, to avoid information overload. He asked his caddie to help read putts on two occasions (and made them both).
“I used to just read putts myself and kind of step up, go first instinct and knock it in,” Reed said. “I’ve done that pretty well all week.”
Noren, a four-time winner on the European Tour last year who is No. 12 in the world, missed a 5-foot birdie putt on the final hole that would have tied him for the lead. He had a 69. Rahm closed with a birdie for a 69.
Michelle Wie rallied to beat Angel Yin with a birdie on the 20th hole, joining Ariya Jutanugarn, Sei Young Kim and Mi Jung Hur in the semifinals of the Lorena Ochoa Match Play at Mexico City.
Wie will meet Kim, a 5-and-4 winner over Karine Icher. “I think it was the definition of survival out there,” Wie said, recalling an early 4-up lead for her opponent
LPGA:
and Wie’s par on No. 18 to force extra holes. “She eagled 2 and 6. I think she was 5 under in seven holes.”
The third-ranked Jutanugarn lost a 3-up lead to Cristie Kerr before finishing off the 39-year-old American with a par on the 19th hole. Kerr won three weeks ago and lost to Haru Nomura last week on the sixth hole of a playoff in Texas.
Hur had two 1-up victories, over Lydia Ko and then Shanshan Feng.
John Daly shot a bogey-free 7-under 65 to take a one-stroke lead over Kenny Perry after two rounds of the Insperity Invitational at The Woodlands, Texas. Daly, 51, is going for his first victory since 2004 at the PGA Tour’s Buick Invitational. Daly made six birdies on the final 12 holes to reach 11-under 133. Perry shot 65.