Baird and McCarron charge, but Pettersson holds his lead at Wyndham

8/17/2008

The pressure to follow a record round with an even better number got to Carl Pettersson. Just not enough to cost him the lead.

Pettersson topped the Sedgefield Country Club leaderboard for the second straight day, shooting a 4-under 66 on Saturday to follow his tournament-record 61 and take a two-stroke lead after three rounds of the Wyndham Championship.

A local fan favorite who went to high school in Greensboro and is on the tournament's board of directors, Pettersson had a 19-under 191 total. The Swede is in position to claim his third career PGA Tour victory and first since 2006 -- even if he admitted that he occasionally tried too hard to outdo his second-round performance.

Leading after 54 holes in Greensboro usually leads to a victory. From 1999-2006, every champion of this tournament had held or shared the third-round lead, a string broken last year when eventual PGA Tour rookie of the year Brandt Snedeker erased Jeff Overton's three-stroke advantage across town at Forest Oaks.

Then again, with low scores commonplace all weekend at the original Donald Ross-designed course, no lead is safe.

McCarron, who entered trailing Pettersson by four strokes, was bogey-free and had three consecutive birdies on Nos. 2-4 to move to 14 under. He said he didn't peek at the leaderboard until midway through his round, when he remained four strokes back.

Baird had the best round of the day, a 62 that included seven birdies on the back nine and birdies on his final four holes. He began the round 10 strokes off the lead but could only hope that Pettersson would somehow self-destruct on his hometown course.

Leaderboard – Round 3:

1. Carl Pettersson              SWE  64 61 66 191 -19
2. Scott McCarron               USA  65 64 64 193 -17
3. Briny Baird                     USA  67 68 62 197 -13
    Kevin Streelman             USA  66 64 67 197 -13
    Garrett Willis                  USA  64 64 69 197 -13
6. Scott Sterling                  USA  64 71 64 199 -11
    Kent Jones                     USA  66 68 65 199 -11
    John Sneden                  AUS  66 66 67 197 -11
    John Riegger                  USA  67 65 67 197 -11
    Jerry Kelly                      USA  66 65 68 197 -11
    Tim Clark                       SAF  64 67 68 197 -11
    Bob Sowards                   USA  65 66 68 197 -11

Source: AP, PGA Tour