Martin Mathews is hoping Brendan Steele can justify faith and serve it up to Tommy Fleetwood, while he's backing Jason Dufner to win his two-ball.
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1pt Jason Dufner to win his two-ball at 9/5
I said this time yesterday that I didn’t think Brendan Steele would ‘go away’ and so it proved as, despite a one-over round of 71, he sits one shot off the lead going in to Sunday and is now a best price of 15/2.
The man who has replaced Steele at the head of affairs through three rounds though is pre-tournament favourite Tommy Fleetwood, who now has a golden opportunity to land a first PGA Tour title.
Fleetwood finds himself in this position courtesy of a third round 67 on a rollercoaster Saturday, which by my reckoning saw six different players hold a share of the lead at some stage.
The man from Southport, who is known as one of the best tee to green players in the game, sits first for the week in strokes-gained off-the-tee and second from tee to green, however he made his move to the top of the leaderboard on the back nine courtesy of a hot putter.
Fleetwood has finished second three times in solo events on the PGA Tour (he also finished second alongside his partner Sergio Garcia at last year's Zurich Classic), twice in major championships and once in a WGC. This is the first time he has held a 54-hole lead on the PGA Tour and without doubt it represents the best chance he has had going in to Sunday.
With slick greens and gusting winds wreaking havoc with the players, and no sign of any change in the conditions on Sunday, it may well be that Fleetwood is currently sat on the winning score at five-under, and you would have to think if he can fashion anything under-par that may well be good enough.
Behind Fleetwood and Steele we have the English duo of Lee Westwood and Luke Donald, while a further shot back and three off the lead lie Charl Schwartzel, Sungjae Im and Daniel Berger.
On any other Sunday you would give every chance to this quintet, as indeed you would to those on one-under and even level par, however I will return to what I said yesterday - this is a notoriously hard course to play catch up on.
To back this up we only need to look at the results over the last decade and we will see that everyone one of the winners during that period sat first or second on the leaderboard going in to the final day. Therefore, while you can never say never, I am very much of the opinion that the winner will come from the final pairing of Fleetwood and Steele.
The layers make Fleetwood a best priced 5/4 compared to Steele’s 15/2 and of course with his status in the game the Englishman has every right to be a strong favourite. From my point of view though I am more than happy with the 10/1 we took before round three on Steele and with the safety net of four places on side I am not looking to get involved in the outright market again.
Looking at Sunday’s two-ball pairings though and there is one that catches my eye, with JASON DUFNER taken to beat Byeong Hun An.
To be honest there is little to choose between the duo in my eyes in and the Korean undoubtedly owes his odds-on price to his far superior form over recent months.
On a track like this though, in these sort of tough conditions, recent form tends to go out of the window a little and in simple terms it is all about finding a way to get around the course while limiting the damage.
This is something that Dufner has proven to be hugely adept at when teeing up at PGA National over the years, missing only one cut in 11 visits here, and time and again he turns up in this part of Florida and puts in a strong performance regardless of the state of his game beforehand.
This year the Ohio native arrived here on the back of making four straight cuts for the first time in over two years and he has pushed on from there to post three solid rounds, including the only bogey-free effort on Saturday.
An has turned his week around after a horror opening effort of 76 to post two sub-70 rounds, however he has still been relying on his excellent scrambling game around the greens to a large extent, hitting 21 of 36 greens across Friday and Saturday.
Dufner meanwhile has been typically strong from tee-to-green, hitting 15 greens in round three, and at the odds on offer I am happy to take a small chance that he can grind out another solid round and get the better of his playing partner today.
Posted at 0900 GMT on 01/03/20
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