Australia aiming to chase down Belgium at World Cup of Golf
Team Belgium will take a five-shot lead into the final round of the ISPS HANDA Melbourne World Cup of Golf but Team Australia are confident they can be chased down.
Courtesy of Australian Golf Media
Playing four-ball on Saturday, Marc Leishman and Cameron Smith combined to fire 7-under 65 in the third round at The Metropolitan Golf Club.
The duo got off to a hot start and was 6-under through the turn before the birdies dried up on the back-9 with pins tucked in difficult to access positions.
“It was a good day. It was probably a story of two different nines. We got off to a great
start obviously and cooled off a bit on the back-9,” said Leishman.
“But the back was set up extremely tough, I thought, which is kind of interesting in four‑ball when you’re so used to attacking and you couldn’t really attack.
“So trying to make the 20‑ and 30‑footers for birdies and we just weren’t able to make them. But it was nice to birdie 16 and, finish off for 7 under.”
Playing foursomes in the final round, Team Australia is aiming to go low with a home crowd cheering them on.
“I think whatever the conditions do, foursomes is such a hard game. It’s going to be really important for us to get off to a good start, really get ourselves in it, give them (the leaders) something to think about, because if we’re not a few under through five or six holes, they can sort of cruise,” added Leishman.
“It would be good if we could get the crowd into it. I don’t think we need to get ourselves up, I think more so to get the guys behind us thinking about it.
“If we get the fanatics roaring, our friends and family, we have a lot of people supporting us, which is great. We’ve enjoyed that so far this week and it would be nice if we could make tomorrow our best day.”
Thomas Pieters and Thomas Detry have placed Team Belgium on top of the leaderboard, shooting 9-under in the third round to take a five shot advantage into the final round.
“We were making some good putts. And it’s always nice when you know your partner’s playing some great golf, it gives you a lot of confidence and you can play some pretty free golf,” said Detry, who hopes to claim a World Cup win for Belgium.
“Walking up that first tee, when you see the trophy, it’s just unbelievable. You see all those names on there, you see pretty much all the countries and all the players that won that tournament, this tournament. It’s pretty amazing.”
Sitting in tied second place are the teams from Mexico, Italy and Korea while the teams from Sweden and England are tied alongside Australia in fifth place on 13-under the card.
Team New Zealand is tied 19th on 6-under the card after three rounds.
The final round of the ISPS HANDA Melbourne World Cup of Golf tees off at 9.55am with Team New Zealand on course at 10.42am, Team Australia out at 12.06pm and the final group of Team Belgium and Team Mexico teeing off at 12.30pm.
For all round 3 scores please visit pga.org.au
For all round 4 tee times please visit pga.org.au
