The 33-year-old Englishman was a shot behind a trio of players sharing the lead going into the third and final round at the Castle Stuart links course but rolled in nine birdies to cruise home ahead of Sweden’s Fredrik Andersson Hed, who fired a 62— the week’s lowest score— and finished at 15 under in a tournament reduced to 54 holes after Saturday’s action was suspended due to heavy rain and even landslides.

Donald’s third victory of the year will provide him with a perfect tonic ahead of the British Open at Royal St. George’s starting Thursday, where he’ll attempt to land his first major.

Scotland’s Scott Jamieson finished in a six-way tie for third at 14 under, clinching a qualifying berth for the Open.
 

In Silvis, Illinois, Steve Stricker assumed a familiar spot atop the John Deere Classic leaderboard Saturday, shooting an 8-under-par 63 to go up by two strokes after three rounds.

Stricker knocked in a 75-foot birdie putt on the first hole and went on to post his best round of the year while closing in on his third straight victory in the tournament.

He’s at 20-under 193 following a par save on 18, where he twice hit into bunkers before drilling a 15-foot putt. That put Stricker in a good spot because he’s won the last four times he held the outright lead going into the final round.

Stricker, though, is not the kind who keeps track of something like that.

“I don’t put a lot of stock in numbers past, present, whatever,” he said. “I just try to go out there and do the things that I’m capable of doing. You’ve just got to stick to your own game and that’s what I’ve been able to do the last four or five years.”

Zimbabwean Brendon de Jonge is alone in second at 18-under after matching Stricker’s 63. Second-round leader Chez Reavie, who started the day two strokes up on Stricker, shot 68 and was 17 under, one ahead of Kyle Stanley (65).

As he has done so often recently at TPC Deere Run, Stricker made it look easy, even after getting in trouble with his opening tee shot.

His ball landed in the rough on the edge of a fairway bunker and he had to stand in the sand to hit his second shot, a line drive that stopped on the green 75 feet from the pin. Then he stepped up and knocked it in, the ball rolling uphill, topping a crest and carrying back down into the center of the cup.

Stricker raised both arms in celebration, then smiled at playing partner Jhonattan Vegas and shrugged as if to say, “When you’re hot, you’re hot.”

“At first, I thought I hit it too hard and then it looked like it was going to be good to tap in (for par),” he said. “And then it just went right in the last couple of feet.”

Stricker moved into the lead with a 14-foot birdie putt on No. 7 as Reavie made bogey at 6. When Reavie bogeyed 8, he suddenly found himself four strokes behind— a six-shot reversal in about 90 minutes.

De Jonge, meanwhile, kept making birdies to keep Stricker from running away with the lead.

“I got off to a great start today, which was the key to set up the round,” he said. “I think tomorrow’s going to be more of the same. You’re going to have to make a bunch of birdies. The golf course is in such good condition, the ball’s going so far, that you get a lot of wedges in your hands.”

Stricker birdied six of his first 10 holes before turning more humanlike down the stretch and making only two more birdies the rest of the way. But on this warm, breezy Midwestern day, no one was sharp enough to catch him, though for a few minutes at the end it looked as though his lead would drop to one.

His tee shot found a bunker left of the fairway and his second shot landed in a bunker in front of the green. He got the ball up to within 15 feet, not an easy putt by any means, but he knocked it in.

“That was a good save to kind of keep the momentum going into tomorrow,” he said.

With one more solid round, Stricker would join an elite group. Only 20 times previously on the tour has someone won a tournament three years in a row, a list that includes Tiger Woods, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson and Johnny Miller,

Woods has done it six times and was the most recent to accomplish the feat, winning the Bridgestone Invitational in 2005, 2006 and 2007.