With one of only two rounds in the 60s on Saturday, Jimmy Walker and Rickie Fowler earned a spot in the final group with the only team ahead of them in the World Cup.
Walker and Fowler shot a 3-under 69, one stroke better than the Danish duo of Soren Kjeldsen and Thorbjorn Oleson and a score the Americans felt was very good in the alternate-shot format.
Going into the final round of best-ball play, they trail the Danes by four shots.
“It would be nice to be out front or a little closer,” Fowler said, “but with where we were coming into today [trailing by five], just putting up a solid round of golf was that we wanted to do. We did that and we gave ourselves a chance going into tomorrow. It’s going to take some good golf and some birdies obviously, but it will be nice being in that final group to know exactly where we stand.”
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On Saturday, Walker and Fowler made five birdies and two bogeys. They stuck to the same conservative approach off the tee that they used in their first-round 70.
“No reason to push out there in alternate shot,” Fowler said. “There’s some places where you can get yourself in some trouble pretty quickly if you hit it offline. So a little bit more conservative off the tee, just take a little bit of stress off of the two of us. We had to get up and down a couple times. We made a good par on 16. And you’re going to make bogeys, you’re going to have mistakes that happen in alternate shot, but the more you can kind of keep moving forward and keeping it simple, we’ve done a good job of that the first day and today as well.”
Walker said he and Fowler don’t have a score in mind for Sunday.
“I think Rick and I just need to go out and make a bunch of birdies. That’s all we can do. I know we think our best golf’s still in front of us, so we’ll go out tomorrow and see what happens.”
