2023 St. Jude Championship leaderboard: Lucas Glover eyes second straight win as Jordan Spieth, stars chase

Another humid, soggy day led to low scores at TPC Southwind as scoring was nearly a stroke and a half under par for the third consecutive day at the 2023 FedEx St. Jude Championship. As a result, if you did not go forward in Round 3, you were getting passed as the 54-hole leaderboard started taking shape.

Lucas Glover did not get passed, though. He maintained his tournament-long lead with a 4-under 66 to preserve a one-stroke advantage over Taylor Moore. He also sits two ahead of Tommy Fleetwood and three in front of Jordan Spieth and Max Homa.

The 43-year old Glover is attempting Sunday to win consecutive PGA Tour events after taking last week’s Wyndham Championship.

It will not be a cakewalk, though, with the likes of Homa, Spieth, Sungjae Im, Viktor Hovland, Patrick Cantlay and Rory McIlroy all within striking distance going into the final round. Each has a great chance to catch Glover as he tries for the sixth PGA Tour victory of his underrated career.

Let’s take a look at his path to a win and what he did on Saturday to put him in this position.

Leader

Lucas Glover (-14): The putter remains a revelation. Despite two short-ish misses late, Glover still gained strokes on the field with his broomstick for the second consecutive day, and he has gained strokes on the field overall this week. That is … a problem for the other 69 golfers. Why is that a problem? Well, Homa — who trails by three — summed it up pretty well after touching off a 65 of his own on Saturday.

“Anybody who’s ever listened to him hit a golf ball knows he’s different,” said Homa. “For 43, he looks real good. He works really hard. I know he works out a lot. He’s obviously a very special player, won a U.S. Open. You can’t hide talent at some point. … He’s also one of the best dudes out here. It’s nice to watch him play — I wish he would play maybe just a little bit worse [Sunday] so we’d have a chance, but it is fun when you see the good guys have all the success.”

Unless somebody from five back (or further) really goes crazy (think 63 or better), Glover probably needs to play an average round (think 68) to rip off his second win in the last eight days. That would vault him into the top five in the FedEx Cup standings and onto the fringe of a real conversation about possibly making the Ryder Cup team.

Obviously, he still has to go out and do it, but when you strike it like he does, it’s not difficult to have a high floor. What’s much harder is what he’s already done, which is make enough putts to raise the ceiling. In other words, the difficult physical work is done, it will simply be a mental grind to the end for Glover to get another victory.

Other contenders

2. Taylor Moore (-13)3. Tommy Fleetwood (-12)T4. Max Homa, Jordan Spieth (-11)T6. Viktor Hovland, Patrick Cantlay, Rory McIlroy, Tom Kim, Emiliano Grillo, Sungjae Im (-9)

This is a great chase pack complete with guys who are striking the ball quite well. Moore, Homa, Im, McIlroy and Cantlay are all among the top seven in the field from tee to green, and all are outside the top 20 in putting. What I see when I look at that is four golfers who could get really hot with the putter early and make a little charge. Whether that charge is sustainable probably depends on what Glover does, but don’t be surprised if one of them pops early and tries to ride a wave to victory.

“I’m going to need to go out tomorrow and shoot something like Justin Rose shot this morning,” said McIlroy. “Like a 61, 62 to have a chance. But I feel like you break it down, 4 under [each] nine, I feel with the way I’m hitting it, the way I’m playing, it’s doable. Not saying that that’s what’s going to happen, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility.”

Round of the day

Justin Rose flirted with a sub-60 round for a while eventually settling on a 9-under 61 and a new course record. He did confess he was thinking about the magic number throughout his round: “I was aware of 59. That was really my primary objective. Middle of the 15th fairway at 8 under, that’s a sand wedge into the green. Hit a good shot over the top of the flag. That’s one of the challenges all the players are having this week is just controlling your distances with the short irons. The ball is going so far because of the heat.

“Then, obviously, 16 is always an opportunity where you kind of throw an eagle at it or something. So, I knew that 59 was obviously [in] the cards. The last two holes, the wind picked up. We’re on the edge of a storm it feels like, and the last two holes played pretty tricky. But in the end, happy to end up with two pars. But yeah, I actually didn’t realize 61 was the course record, but great. Nice little bonus for the day.”

Scheffler’s putter struggles

Scottie Scheffler shot a 1-over 71 Saturday and lost 4.4 strokes to the field with his putter. Given the entire arc of his season, this is clearly becoming a real problem. Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but Scheffler is 10th from tee to green this week and 59th in putting. It’s the easiest part of the game to fix, but it has to be infuriating to him to have hit it like Tiger Woods in his prime this year and not have gotten more wins out of it.

2023 St. Jude Championship updated odds, picks

I think Glover is going to win, but I love the value from Homa here with the way he’s hitting it (3rd from tee to green) and how he’s putting it (29th). He could absolutely sink a few early and make a run toward the top of this board.