Hunter Mahan made 173 feet of putts Saturday at Redstone
Golf Club.
HUMBLE, Texas -- Hunter Mahan is on a roll. And that
stretches beyond the 173 feet of putts he made in Saturday’s
third round of the Shell Houston Open. The 29-year-old Texas
resident has just one finish outside the top 25 in six starts this
season and, at 15 under, he enters Sunday’s final round just
two shots behind leader Louis Oosthuizen. Mahan shot a 7-under 65
-- his best round of the 27 he’s played at this event –
Saturday. A long bunker shot for a tap-in par on No. 4 got him
started, then he made five putts from outside 10 feet on his next
10 holes. “That was a nice, easy birdie,” Mahan said of
the fourth hole. “Then I made, I don't even know, 20-plus
footer for par on the next hole and another 20-footer after that
and played the next hole, 7 and made a birdie. That was a nice
stretch there.” The two putts were 23- and 34-footers. He
also rolled home putts from 14 feet (No. 7), 27 feet (No. 10) and
28 feet (No. 14) to go along with a 9-foot, 11-inch birdie roll on
No. 11. Mahan was so “in the zone” that he had no idea
how strong his round was until it was almost over. “I didn't
know how many under I was until 15 or 16 because I was just in the
round,” he said. “I was just playing golf. I was just
trying to hit the next shot as good as I could and trying to stay
in the moment as best I can, you know.” Mahan won the World
Golf Championships-Accenture Match Play Championship in February
and a victory Sunday would make him the TOUR’s first two-time
winner of the season. While his game isn’t clicking like it
was at Dove Mountain, Mahan says that he’s not far off that
pace. “I feel good about how -- what I'm doing and how I'm
playing,” he said. “I feel like I can hit almost -- I
can get up and down if I miss a shot or I just feel pretty
comfortable on the golf course where nothing is going to bother me
too much. That's important.”
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