AUGUSTA, Georgia: Brooks Koepka extended his lead at the Masters to four shots over Spain’s world No. 3 Jon Rahm on Saturday before third-round play at soggy Augusta National was suspended for the day due to heavy rain.
With puddles forming on the greens and players battling hard against weather more akin to a British Open, organizers decided to leave the remainder of the contest for Sunday.
In wet, cold and windy conditions, players huddled under umbrellas in between shots and Tiger Woods wore a woollen hat over the top of his baseball cap.
“It’s obviously super difficult. Ball’s not going anywhere,” said Koepka, who played his six holes of round three at 1-under.
“You’ve got rain to deal with, and it’s freezing cold. It doesn’t make it easy. You’ve got to make some pressure putts. You know it was going to be a difficult day. You’ve just got to grind through it and try to salvage something.”
The weather forecast for Sunday is positive, however, with temperatures expected to rise to above 60 degrees F (15.5 C) and much less chance of rain.
The third round will resume Sunday at 8:30 a.m. with the final round expected to begin four hours later off the first and 10th tees in pairings.
That will make for a packed day of action with the leaders set to play 30 holes.
A total of 39 players, Rahm among them, had returned Saturday morning to finish their second rounds, interrupted by stormy weather on Friday. The Spaniard cut Koepka’s lead down to two strokes before third-round play got under way.
In round three, Rahm and Koepka both made birdies on the par-5 second but bogeys on the par-3 fourth and par-4 fifth from the Spaniard left Koepka with his four-shot gap.
Koepka, at 13-under par, was on the green at the seventh hole with an 11-foot par putt when play was halted while Rahm, on 9-under, had a nine-foot birdie putt.
Koepka plays in the breakaway LIV Golf League and with his performances on that tour, including his win at Orlando last week, not counting toward the Official World Golf Rankings, he is placed at 118th in the world.
Koepka is a four-time major winner but his formal ranking would make him the lowest-ranked player to win the Masters since the rankings system was introduced in 1986.
The current holder of that distinction is Angel Cabrera of Argentina, who was ranked 69th when he won the green jacket in 2009.
Amateur Sam Bennett was in third place on the leaderboard, having bogeyed the par-5 second, seven strokes behind US countryman Koepka as he bids to become the first amateur to win the Masters.
Patrick Cantlay handled the challenging conditions well as he rose up the leaderboard with three straight birdies from the second hole and he was 5-under overall through the 13th hole.
England’s Matt Fitzpatrick, the reigning US Open champion, was one of three players level with Cantlay on five under after making three birdies before play was stopped.
Veteran Phil Mickelson, also on the LIV tour, produced a superb long, curling putt on the par-3 sixth for his second birdie of the day to briefly reach 6-under but followed that with successive bogeys.
Tiger Woods had to battle to avoid the cut but the 15-time major winner may have wished he had failed after a nightmare start to his third round.
Woods, starting on the 10th hole, made two bogeys before double bogeys on the par-5 15th and par-3 16th left him bottom of the leaderboard on six-over overall.
By making the cut, Woods matched the record of Fred Couples and Gary Player with 23 consecutive made cuts at the Masters.
Woods hasn’t missed a Masters cut since 1996 when he was playing as an amateur.