Australia's Stuart Appleby fired a third-round 69 on Saturday to hold a two-shot lead over surging Swede Mathias Gronberg heading into the final round of the Shell Houston Open.
Appleby's three-under effort put him at 14-under 202 through 54 holes of the 5.5 million-dollar event. Gronberg carded a 67 for 12-under 204 to book his place in the final pairing.
Bob Estes and Jerry Smith were four adrift at 10-under.
Appleby returned to the golf course early Saturday morning to complete his second round, which was called Friday due to darkness. He had two holes remaining and made par on both of them to finish at 11-under (133).
Appleby then went on to make three birdies in his first seven holes of the third round.
"Finishing up was not a big deal," Appleby said of his early start. "I would like to have had my rhythm going."
Appleby briefly looked like making it a runaway, stretching his lead to four strokes at one point before Gronberg got it going.
"It's so funny, I never saw the top of the leaderboard, Gronberg said. "I looked a little bit, I didn't look too much, but I never saw his (Appleby) score for the whole 18 holes."
Gronberg nabbed his first birdie on the eighth hole, sinking a four-footer, and followed it with two more, making a 48-foot birdie putt on nine and a 41-footer on 10.
"It felt like 60 feet," Gronberg said of the birdie on the ninth hole. "It was really nice to have the momentum going. I kind of wanted to get the momentum going in my favour and kind of get the round going a little bit."
A birdie at 12 got him to 12-under and his only bogey on 17 dropped him to 11, but he made a 28-footer on the final hole that got him back to 12-under.
It proved to be a big putt. Appleby made a bogey on the final hole and his lead went from four to two.
Now Gronberg has the chance to put a little pressure on Appleby, who has had the lead since the first round.
Though Gronberg has won four times on the European Tour, he struggled to keep his card on the PGA Tour. He feels confident, but said he'd focus on his own game rather than chasing Appleby.
"I'm probably not going to look too much at all what he's doing," Gronberg said. "I'm going to admire good shots and if he's hitting good putts and good shots, then that's about it. But I'm not going to be too worried about him."
Appleby said Gronberg wasn't the only golfer with a chance to catch him.
"You can't run away from the pack if you aren't running away from it," Appleby said laughing. "I think running away would be six shots up with six holes to play. That would be pretty much a runaway. There's a lot of golf, 25 percent of the tournament still left out there."
Estes is among those close enough to catch Appleby and believes someone will get near him.
"You can make birdies on this golf course," Estes said. "Some of the guys are going to do it and hopefully I'll be one of those."
PGA HOUSTON OPEN COMPLETE THIRD-ROUND SCORES
HOUSTON SCORES HERE ON SATURDAY AFTER THE THIRD ROUND (USA UNLESS NOTED):
-- 202 - Stuart Appleby (AUS) 66-67-69
-- 204 - Mathias Gronberg (SWE) 68-69-67
-- 206 - Bob Estes 71-69-66, Jerry Smith 67-70-69
-- 207 - KJ Choi (KOR) 71-69-67, Trevor Immelman 69-67-71
-- 208 - Jeff Gove 69-71-68, Paul Goydos 69-71-68, Richard S. Johnson (SWE) 72-69-67, J.L. Lewis 71-69-68, Wes Short 72-68-68, Brett Wetterich 70-69-69
-- 209 - Rich Beem 73-69-67, Jeffrey Overton 71-69-69, Greg Owen (AUS) 69-65-75, Nick Watney 71-69-69
-- 210 - Aaron Baddeley (AUS) 68-70-72, Hunter Mahan 69-72-69, Steve Stricker 72-70-68
-- 211 - Stephen Leaney (AUS) 68-71-72, Ian Poulter (GBR) 72-69-70
-- 212 - Henrik Bjornstad (NOR) 71-69-72, Mathew Goggin (AUS) 70-73-69, Daisuke Maruyama (JPN) 73-70-69, John Senden (AUS) 71-69-72, Mike Weir (CAN) 71-71-70
-- 213 - Padraig Harrington (IRL) 71-73-69, Graeme McDowell (NIR) 72-72-69
-- 214 - Greg Chalmers (AUS) 72-69-73, Daniel Chopra (SWE) 74-69-71
-- 215 - Vijay Singh (FIJ) 69-71-75
-- 216 - Gavin Coles (AUS) 75-67-74, Jesper Parnevik (SWE) 69-73-74, Phil Tataurangi (NZL) 73-71-72
-- 218 - Gabriel Hjertstedt (SWE) 72-69-77, Camilo Villegas (COL) 72-72-74
-- 219 - Fredrik Jacobson (SWE) 69-71-79
-- 222 - Charl Schwartzel (RSA) 73-71-78.