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Rozner: Leishman on cruise control at BMW

After an absolute bomb of a drive on 18, Jason Day stood in the fairway with iron in hand Saturday and a chance to close the gap on Marc Leishman, who has led wire-to-wire this week.

With a 366-yard drive on the par-5 and only 222 to the flag, Day yanked his 7-iron into the bunker, plugging it and giving himself no stance.

Instead of an eagle chance, Day could not get up and down for bird and Leishman did, thus giving him a 5-shot lead going into the final round of the BMW Championship at Conway Farms.

That was the entire story Saturday in Lake Forest, the chasers not really chasing, and Leishman coasting in with a pedestrian 3-under 68.

He was not alone. There was much mediocre play at the top of the leaderboard, even with a course asking to be had.

"I thought with the pin locations there was an opportunity to shoot a low score," said Day, who started Saturday 3 shots back and shot a 1-under 70. "I mean, I hit a 7-iron on the last one, pulled it.

"The one on 4 today, landed a 7-iron 210. I usually hit my 7-iron 185. Large gap in between what I'm usually hitting. It was really hard to judge how far I was hitting my irons."

The roars were there Saturday. Conway Farms hasn't stopped giving them up from the minute the players stepped on property Monday, and Medinah, which gets the tourney in two years, has to be licking its chops.

With talk of a more difficult setup for the weekend in Lake Forest, at 6,968 yards on moving day, there was plenty of movement and the course was there for the taking, but the roars came early.

The first big run actually came from Jon Rahm, the young Spaniard posting a 6-under 65 - tied for best round of the day - for 11-under and a jump from T-29 to tied for fifth as the leaders made the turn.

And it could have been even better.

Tee to green, nobody was better Friday and Saturday, but Rahm burned too many edges to go really low and get close to the top of the leaderboard. He'll need a monster day in the final round and have to hope the leaders come back, but he's already done that once this year at Torrey Pines.

"I've been hitting driver amazingly. I had to hope to make a couple putts, which I did today. I still missed a few," said Rahm, whose 32 coming home was also tied for the best of the day with Charley Hoffman. "My ball-striking was probably close to the best it's ever been, so hopefully I can keep going tomorrow and make a few more putts."

Rickie Fowler opened the day with a perfect drive and made eagle from 24 feet on the first, but he played 1-over the next 17 holes - including par on 18 - and fell from 3 back to start the day to 5 back entering Sunday.

Of the top 14 players, no one made eagle on the gettable par-5 18th, only seven made bird and one made bogey.

Dustin Johnson (-1) was nowhere to be found and the 24-year-olds - Justin Thomas (-5) and Jordan Spieth (-7) - could not take advantage of the easy conditions.

That left the 33-year-old Leishman to set it on cruise control.

Now, all he has to do is forget about the lead he blew with a disastrous back nine in Boston two weeks ago when Justin Thomas stole the second leg of the FedEx Cup Playoffs.

"After what happened at the Dell, I have extra determination to finish this one off," Leishman said. "I feel like this course sets up for me a little better than it did at Dell.

"Hopefully I can just play well, do the right things and not worry about the result too much, as hard as that will be.

"I need to concentrate on tomorrow and I can't worry about what happened a week ago or what I did yesterday or the day before that. I'll just go and try to do my job."

Based on what his nearest challengers did Saturday, Leishman has little to worry about.

And Boston will be a distant memory.

brozner@dailyherald.com

• Hear Barry Rozner on WSCR 670-AM and follow him @BarryRozner on Twitter.

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