CN Canadian Open - 3rd Round

Suzann Pettersen fired a 66 to take a five-shot lead into the final round of the CN Canadian Women's Open.  Angela Stanford is in second place at -9, Karrie Webb is third at -8 while Lorena Ochoa and In-Kyung Kim are tied for fourth at -7.

Pettersen took an early bogey at 3 but three birdies later on the front nine put her at -11 and up by two.  A birdie at 10 extended her lead and birdies at 14 and 18 stretched her overnight margin to five.  Suzann has hit 30 of 39 fairways over the first three rounds (76.9%) and only used 82 putts.  Numbers like that make a player of her length nearly unbeatable, especially when her closest competitors can't get it going on Moving Day.  Stanford eagled 18 to take over second place but was only even par on the day prior to that.  Webb was -9 at the turn but played the back in +1 (three bogeys with two birdies).  Inky went out in 32 (despite two bogeys) but also played the back +1 with a bogey at 16.  Like Webb, Ochoa was -9 at the turn but went the wrong way from there - two bogeys and seven pars.  Of the four players at T6, none could keep pace with the leader - only Ai Mizayato and Kristy McPherson managed as well as 69.  I don't know if the playing conditions had a hand in this but if they didn't, I'll be surprised.

Morgan Pressel matched Pettersen's 66 and climbed to T10 while Rachel Hetherington and Vicky Hurst carded 67s to put them at T12, but many more lost ground on Saturday.  Song-Hee Kim and Jiyai Shin both collapsed to 77s and now stand -3 T21 and +1 T36 respectively.  Catriona Matthew's 75 and M.J. Hur's 74 dropped them to -4 T12.  Sun Young Yoo shot 73 to drop to -5 T10 and Janice Moodie posted 75 to stand -2 T23.

So we went from a terrific leaderboard featuring 12 Top 30 players in the top 16 (all of whom were within five strokes of the lead) to a five-shot runaway and only two players within six in 24 hours time.  The final result appears to be in little doubt...except for Suzann Pettersen's recent inability to hold onto a lead.  This is a great opportunity for her to get that monkey off her back but if she doesn't come through here, that gorilla will weigh more than 800 pounds.

The tape-delayed TV coverage on Golf Channel will air at 11:30pm tonight.  If I'm still awake at that hour I'll probably be watching LSU play football.  If anybody wants to file a Fanpost with observations from the coverage, by all means do so.