Louis Oosthuizen endured a difficult day at Bethpage Black which saw his score for the PGA Championship bubble over par.
The numbers tell a story.
Oosthuizen made a single birdie, dropped four shots to slide 12 places down the leaderboard. His putting saw him lose 1.2 strokes to the field to add to the less than 50% of fairways hit in round three.
The top-ranked South African, now +1 for the championship, dropped shots at three of the course’s four par 3s.
Short left into the greenside bunker on the third, short right into the sand on 14 and long right into the rough on 17.
His other bogey came at the difficult fifth where he made five despite a drive down the right side of the fairway.
Sunday will now be a recovery job more than anything else as he looks to add to his season’s earnings while finding his A game again.
Ahead of him is countryman Erik van Rooyen, who managed a level par 70.
Van Rooyen opened with a birdie before a stumble at the fifth. A birdie at the sixth was a bonus after being bunkered off the tee before a wayward iron cost him a shot at the ninth.
After turning level, he hit his approach to give range on the 10th before paying the price for offline drives on the 13th and 15th holes.
A good iron into the par 3 17th setup a birdie chance from just outside 10 feet and he would stroke that home to return to par for the day.
Van Rooyen will start Sunday in 12th place, 10 behind Brooks Koepka and three off the bunch sharing second.
His numbers, too, tell a story.
Photo: Warren Little/Getty Images
