Brendan Steele leads a host of young players at the top as the third round of the Valero Texas Open concludes
If you look at the leaderboard after the third round of the Valero Texas Open, chances are you probably won’t find any names that you know off. At the top of the leaderboard is PGA Tour rookie Brendan Steele with a score of 7 under par. One shot below him
is, also relatively unknown, Cameron Tringale and following him in a tie for third place are Kevin Chappell and Brandt Snedeker.
This is in sharp contrast to the situation after the second round when a total of seven players held the joint lead at 3 under par, the most crowded leaderboard in a decade on the PGA Tour. This happened after winds of 50 kph rocked San Antonio’s AT&T Oaks
Course, allowing only thirteen players out of the field to break par. The average score, 75.289 was the highest since the first round of the 2008 Open Championship at the Royal Birkdale.
Steele made 6 birdies in the day, including a late surge on the 17th and 18th holes to offset his two bogeys, to finish with a four under 68. Cameron Tringale, who is playing his second season on the Tour, was tied for 8th
at the end of the second round, but surged into a two shot lead which he held till the 16th hole. He missed his tie shot on the 18th hole to match Steele’s score of four under and is now one stroke off the lead.
Another rookie, Kevin Chappell finished with a score of two under 70 and is now tied for third place with Brandt Snedeker who also shot a 70. Of the four golfers heading the leaderboards, only 30 -year-old Snedeker has ever won a tournament, the Wyndham
Championship in 2007. Steele, Tringale and Chappell are still in their 20s and only have a combined sixty-two starts to their credit.
This is hardly bad news for them; players in their 20s have won three of the last four PGA Tour tournaments.
"A lot of guys that you now know as the top players in the world you didn't know at one point," Steele remarked about the relatively unknown players leading the event. "Just because it's not Tiger or Phil doesn't mean they're not great players."
"There's a lot of younger players getting on TOUR quicker now than there ever has been and I think that's really been the difference," Tringale added.
Geoff Ogilvy, who was the only non-American to share the lead at the end of the second round, shot a two-over 74 to fall back down in the leaderboards. Defending Champion Adam Scott, who shot a two-under 70, is in a three way tie for fifth place with Charles
Howell and Pat Perez, who shot the day's best score of 67.
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