FORT WORTH – Like all good stories, the third round of the Charles Schwab Challenge came with Aesopian morals on Saturday.
First, it’s amazing what can happen if you get up before the lunch hour.
While leisurely enjoying a barbecue sandwich on the fine folks at Visit Fort Worth, I took a glance of the leader board through a still-capable peripheral lens and about coughed up a piece of brisket.
Charley [delete carnal word here] Hoffman had done a Carl Lewis long jump into contention before Jordan Spieth had gotten out of bed.
If you think deleting carnal words is edgy, you should have been around the No. 11 green on Saturday when Kevin Na and his caddie briefly lost their, let’s say composure.
If you talked to the paying customer at Dairy Queen like that, you’d lose your job.
But not at a tournament on the PGA Tour.
Whatever the case, Hoffman’s third-round best 7-under 63 Saturday morning had him well within striking distance — 3 strokes — of Na, the tournament leader at 9-under par, two strokes ahead of a gaggle, which included Spieth.
The Dallas native shot a 2-under 68 to get to 7 under, one of five golfers within a wedge of the leader. Jim Furyk is another.
Spieth’s birdie putts on Saturday were something akin to a Steph Curry 3-pointer: a 29-footer on 1, a 20-footer on 2 and, from way downtown, a 37-footer on No. 7.
“Considering I’m 40 feet on every hole, at some point some of them are going to go in,” Spieth said sarcastically.
Spieth used that fun tool of the language to convey his contempt for his game tee-to-green, which included too few fairways hit.
“You know, I’d like to hit more greens in regulation, and in order to do that, I’ve probably got to be playing out of more fairways,” Spieth said. “I think I had one birdie look inside 50 feet today, and I missed it.”
Honesty is the best policy.
Or is it?
Na’s caddie went all Jerry Springer on a fan in the gallery on No. 11 after he compiled a shot chart that looked like a doctor’s write-up on Keith Richards.
It was long.
Na’s second shot from a fairway bunker hit the lip and shot out into the fairway. His third shot landed in a greenside bunker. He bladed his fourth over the green. (He who is without sin shall cast the first stone.)
His mood ring had turned the color of road rage.
Something happened in his backswing. CBS analysts believed a smart phone – did you know you can actually talk on those things? – had gone off. He left his chip, his fifth shot, short of the green. (Get the man a cigarette.)
Two more shots to the hole totaled a double-bogey 7 and a buzz kill.
It was immediately obvious that his caddie, Kenny Harms, needed one of Jason Dufner’s Dude Wipes as Harms, peace and tranquility a lost cause at this point, began screaming at the fan as if he were a nun and the spectator a first-grader.
“There was a fan distraction, let’s call it,” Na said. “Kenny being Kenny, he went off on her. He was screaming at her. And he has every right to do so. I felt bad for the lady.
“I was upset at first and then I saw the lady’s face and I was like, ‘Oh, my God. She’s going to pee in her pants.’ So, I said, ‘come on Kenny. Let’s forget about it. Let’s just go.’”
That was good advice. To err is human. To forgive is divine.
Na screwed his head back on and saved par on 12 and got a stroke back with a birdie on the par-3 13 over the water.
Na finished fourth here last year. He knows there’s a lot of work left to do.
Ask Jonas Blixt, the leader after 36 holes, but no more after a 4-over 74 in the third round. That put him four strokes back of Na.
Your inquisitive scribe asked the amiable Swede, a hockey devotee, on Friday whom he liked in the Stanley Cup.
He was honest.
“The Blues,” he said. “Anybody but the Bruins.”
Then he couldn’t stop talking about it.
Fellow Swede Marcus Johansson was a neighbor, he said. He even married a family friend, Blixt added.
“I like him. Why does he have to play for the Bruins?”
Jonas, get your head right with ball.
You’re still in this. This is anyone’s ball game.