There is a particular kind of Saturday at TPC Deere Run where the course seems to hand out low numbers to anyone patient enough to ask for one, and this year’s Moving Day, played out under an Independence Day sky that eventually turned on the field with an hour-long lightning delay, was exactly that sort of day. By the time the horn sounded for the final time and the last group had signed for their scores, Lucas Glover and Lee Hodges sat tied at the top at sixteen-under, and a queue of players behind them had spent the afternoon proving that a share of the lead at TPC Deere Run buys nobody a quiet Sunday.
Fowler finds his week’s best round when it matters
Nobody made a bigger jump than Rickie Fowler. He had made the cut on the number, six shots behind the pace, and spent the two days before Moving Day watching, in his own words, “some old geezer light up the John Deere Classic galleries.” On Saturday he decided to join in. Starting on the back nine, Fowler birdied two of his first three holes, then drove it 334 yards at the drivable par-four fourteenth and rolled in the 39-foot eagle putt that followed to set the tone for the rest of his round. An eight-under 63, the low score of the day, carried him 48 places up the leaderboard and into a tie for twelfth at eleven-under, the kind of climb that turns a forgettable week into a live one overnight.
Fowler was characteristically unbothered discussing the mechanics of it afterwards. “I made a 12-footer or so on my third hole, and then the hole right before 14 I had a 30-footer and hit a perfect putt, thought I made it, and it just didn’t break at the end,” he said. “So just kind of kept moving forward, kept trying to hit good putts and make them, and finally got a longer one to go in there at 14.” By his own count he rolled in 137 feet of putts across the round, more than his first two rounds combined, which is as good an explanation as any for how a player goes from missing the cut number to a share of contention in a single afternoon.
Zac Blair’s afternoon of extremes
For a stretch in the middle of the round it was Zac Blair, not Glover or Hodges, doing the leading. Two birdies and an eagle in his first five holes got him within a shot, and a two-shot swing at the ninth, where Glover made his first bogey of the week while Blair rolled in another birdie, sent Blair out in a front-nine 29 and into the lead alone at seventeen-under. It did not last. A wayward tee shot at the par-four eleventh finished in the trees, forced a drop on the cart path, and cost him a double bogey that pulled him back into a tie with Glover. He rallied with a birdie at fourteen to get within a shot again, only to bogey the eighteenth and finish the day in a three-way tie for third with Ben Kohles and Jackson Suber at fifteen-under, a round that touched the lead outright and the wrong side of par within the space of a few holes.
Zach Johnson’s homecoming continues
Behind all of it, Zach Johnson kept doing what Zach Johnson does at this tournament. The Iowa native turned 50 in February and is skipping three majors this year to play the event he calls his fifth major, and it has paid off in exactly the way that sentence suggests it should. He capped a five-under 66 with a 45-foot birdie putt on the eighteenth in front of the largest gallery on the course, moving to thirteen-under and a share of seventh, three shots off the lead heading into Sunday. Fowler, for one, was watching. “I watched a lot of Zach Johnson the last two days,” he said. “It was fun to see him come back from hanging out with the guys on the Champions Tour. He’s had plenty of success around here.”
A final round with no shortage of contenders
Glover, seeking his seventh Tour title and looking entirely at home at a course where he has now built a two-decade history, will head out in the final group alongside Hodges, who caught fire late with four birdies in his last seven holes and has not missed a putt inside ten feet all week. Jackson Suber, Ben Kohles and Doug Ghim sit within two shots, Preston Stout, the reigning NCAA champion playing on a sponsor exemption, remains in the mix at twelve-under, and Fowler and Johnson both have the kind of week going that makes them dangerous rather than distant. TPC Deere Run has a habit of producing this exact shape of Sunday, a leaderboard that looks settled on paper and rarely behaves that way once the final groups reach the back nine.