Players R3 | Scottie Scheffler leads by two; Hoge BREAKS course record

Scottie Scheffler will take a two-shot lead going into the final round of the 2023 Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass.

Ben Smith

11 Mar 2023

Players R3 | Scottie Scheffler leads by two; Hoge BREAKS course record

Scottie Scheffler will take a two-shot lead into the final round of the 2023 Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass.

The 2022 Masters champion carded a third round of 7-under 65 to reach 14-under par in Florida.

It means he has a small but significant advantage over Australia's Min Woo Lee at the richest tournament ever on the PGA Tour.

If Scheffler were to win, he would become the third player in history to hold the Masters and Players title at the same time.

The other two? None other than Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods. Scheffler will also return to the World No.1 spot with a win.

Australia's Lee, who is the brother of LPGA Tour star Minjee Lee, 26, carded a 6-under 66. His round was highlighted by an eagle at the par-4 first.

Lee made bogey at his 54th hole of the week but it has been an otherwise stunning performance so far by the PGA Tour rookie.

Scheffler said:

"For me, I would much rather win the tournament than get back to No. 1 in the world. So that will be my focus going into tomorrow is just going out and having a solid round of golf, and the rankings will be the rankings."

It's tough to rank professional golf, and the OWGR has done a good job of that over long period of time, but at the end of the day for me, it's just an algorithm, and I'm going to go out there tomorrow and try and win the golf tournament.

The round of the day came from Tom Hoge, who carded a course record 10-under 62 at TPC Sawgrass. It was also bogey-free.

As many as nine players have previously carded rounds of 63 at the Stadium Course in competition.

Hoge, 33, is a one-time tour winner. That victory came in the 2022 QBE Shootout alongside Sahith Theegala.

He started on the back nine and made birdies at 11, 12, 15, 16 and 18. Returning home he found more birdies at 2, 3, 4 and 8 and 9.

Hoge, who made the cut on the number, said:

"I didn't even know it was a course record until after we got done in the scoring there. Today was going to be the day to do it if you were going to out here because it was soft with little wind, so you felt like you could make birdies and keep trying to make birdies. So just felt fortunate and tried to take advantage of it the best I could."