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/ Romilly Evans / 08 March 2012 / Leave a Comment 
It happens to the very best. Even Tiger Woods didn't manage to close out the touranment in Abu Dhabi
"Just ask the game’s greatest closer, Tiger Woods. He owns an astonishing 48-4 strike rate when holding the 54-hole lead on Tour, but still meekly succumbed to the steady Robert Rock in Abu Dhabi."
Romilly Evans muses over the apparent difficulty in closing out golf events from the final-round lead.
Being the leader going into the final round of a golf tournament is a funny thing: it's an unnerving position to be in, but everyone wants to be in it. Now, as life's great paradoxes go, it may not be up there with that universal conundrum: how can something come out of nothing? But in the limited confines of professional golf, it does appear to be a universal truth.
Take this fledgling PGA Tour season, where of the nine strokeplay events contested only three have gone to the third-round leader. And in a few instances, these 54-hole pacemakers have squandered huge leads over the closing 18. Firstly, Kyle Stanley blew his top and a five-stroke lead at Torrey Pines. Then Spencer Levin trumped him the following week in Phoenix, imploding from six shots clear - and ironically gifting the trophy to Stanley himself.
As you would expect, both players traded long odds-on on the exchanges for prolonged periods (both before and during the fourth round) but came up short in the final analysis. Their own analysis of their respective capitulations was also very similar. Both complained of a feeling of an uneasiness pervading their game. "I wanted to protect rather than attack," admitted Stanley. "Weird thoughts consumed my mind, I got negative" confessed a spooked Levin.
Of course, this is completely understandable, especially since both men were seeking their maiden wins at the time. Other players chasing that elusive first victory to have fallen at the last include Charlie Wi, Matt Every, Daniel Summerhays. But to deduce that last-round fragility is the hallmark of the uninitiated would be a mistake. After all, 40-time winner Phil Mickelson, USPGA champ Keegan Bradley and veteran victor Jeff Maggert have each suffered a similar fate in 2012. So this phenomenon is clearly no respecter of experience.
Just ask the game's greatest closer, Tiger Woods. He owns an astonishing 48-4 strike rate when holding the 54-hole lead on Tour, but still meekly succumbed to the steady Robert Rock in Abu Dhabi. "Look, it's hard to win," was Tiger's concise conclusion. "Everyone's chasing you. You're in a position where if you do make a few mistakes, it's alright because you have shots to play with... But it also depends on how many guys are chasing. If you've got a whole wolf pack behind you or one or two guys, it's a totally different deal. Personally, I've always been excited about being in that position. I know I've played well to get there, so just trying to do the same things I did to get there and hopefully it will be enough."
And perhaps the last comment is what marks Woods out a messiah for the mainstream of pros - certainly when it comes to attitudinal advice. He never mistakes a chance to win for a chance to lose. That chance should seldom be so great as when a player is leading in the final round. However, the stats don't bear this out. Even a look at a broader sample from last year tells us that third-round leaders convert their opportunity less than 50 percent of the time (22 times in 43 events).
Psychology is crucial in all sports. But golf, with its myriad mechanics and time to ponder rather than play, is particularly cerebral - leaving any wager hostage to the stability of a player's mind. In short, better to be the hunter than the hunted. And as Tiger says, there's often a pack of hounds trying to outfox the leader down the stretch. These hunters run free on the thrill of the chase, while the hunted can get paralysed by fear.
How to spot any such susceptibility is the challenge for the punter. Factors invariably concern the individual leading, the individual(s) pursuing, the individual course, even the individual weather conditions. But finding a gold-standard solution from those imponderables is an equation beyond my mediocre maths.
One thing we can say for certain is that no third-round lead is secure and the Betfair layers are currently out to get the 54-hole leaders - especially when people have typically backed these players at far bigger odds earlier in the event on Betfair and want to lock in a profit. Last week's Honda Classic (finally living up to its name) provided an eloquent case in point. Pre-tournament favourite, Rory McIlroy, was two stokes clear after Saturday but there was still plenty of liquidity available at [1.64] to back him to collect the title. Not a bad price for the World No.1 elect, who duly hung on in determined fashion from a charging Tiger.
Yet this was a rare textbook example of a final round where a proven front-runner got the job done. One swallow does not make a summer. And this weekend's Cadillac Championship at Doral will doubtless see layers of the 54-hole leader again out in force. Watery graves lie in wait around every turn of the infamous "Blue Monster", not to mention on one of the toughest closing holes in golf. Those of a nervous disposition may be well looking to "green out" on the pacesetter if they have the chance, and that could offer some inflated prices for those with the temerity to back the leading candidate.
Still, whether you decide to drink from the poisoned chalice or not, the riddle of the third-round leader seems sure to confound us for years to come. Or perhaps I'm just making something out of nothing.
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