{"id":1557,"date":"2013-06-15T21:45:00","date_gmt":"2013-06-15T21:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/staging.stub.com\/hq\/news\/what-they-said-after-the-third-round-of-the-u-s-open-2\/"},"modified":"2013-06-15T21:45:00","modified_gmt":"2013-06-15T21:45:00","slug":"what-they-said-after-the-third-round-of-the-u-s-open-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/what-they-said-after-the-third-round-of-the-u-s-open-2\/","title":{"rendered":"What they said after the third round of the U.S. Open"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ardmore, PA (Sports Network) &#8211; Most players struggle to fight back from a sextuple-bogey, but Sergio Garcia did his best.<\/p>\n<p>The Spaniard started his third round on the 11th tee, as the championship finally got back on track after Thursday&#8217;s weather delays. He dropped shots on two of his first four holes to slip to 8-over par.<\/p>\n<p>Garcia then knocked three balls out of bounds on the 15th. That led to a sextuple-bogey 10 on the par-4.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Funny enough, when I made an eight on Thursday, I hit a lot of bad shots. Funny enough, I only hit one bad shot today and I made 10,&#8221; Garcia joked. &#8220;My first shot was into the wind and it went out of bounds. My second one I thought it was even better and it went out of bounds by five inches. And then the third one wasn&#8217;t great. And after that, I took a chance and the round came out nicely.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Through three rounds, Garcia stands at 11-over 221. He is 10-over par on the 15th alone.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe he can petition the USGA to skip that hole on Sunday?<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; WEBB SIMPSON, talks about what it has been like defending his title at Merion: &#8220;It&#8217;s been tough. It&#8217;s been exactly what I figured it would be, very challenging, very penal. Pins are maybe a little harder than I thought they would be. But I think score wise, they&#8217;re dialing it in perfectly.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; TIGER WOODS, thinks Merion is the toughest U.S. Open setup he has ever seen: &#8220;Most definitely. Because of the pins, I think. The long holes are playing really long and short holes obviously are short, but the thing is that the pins out there, what they&#8217;re giving us out there are really tough.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; CHARLEY HOFFMAN, said that with just one player in red figures through three rounds he doesn&#8217;t think the winner will end there: &#8220;Oh, 100 percent. I bogeyed the last three holes without winking an eye, so it can happen real fast.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; PAUL CASEY, reiterated what you always hear about the pins at U.S. Opens: &#8220;The pin positions are brutal, as they always are. And 17 caught everybody in my group off guard. It&#8217;s a pin that would scare you if it was a 100-yard par-3. We have 250 yards to go.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; RICKIE FOWLER, was one of the few players that had played Merion in a competitive event prior to the U.S. Open and it helped him get in contention after three rounds: &#8220;It&#8217;s helped a lot. Just knowing that I&#8217;ve played well here before. I know I&#8217;ve made putts here. The biggest thing this week has just been staying patient, sitting back and letting things happen and I finally was able to do that today.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; STEVE STRICKER, has been spending more time with his family and playing less golf this year, and that has helped him this week: &#8220;I really didn&#8217;t know what to expect coming into this week. Last time I played was Players Championship a month ago, so I really didn&#8217;t know what to expect. I&#8217;ve been playing well at home, been hitting it well at home, but that&#8217;s home, it&#8217;s not out here. But I just figured that I&#8217;m in a good place mentally, I feel like I&#8217;m doing the right thing by not playing. I&#8217;m enjoying my time at home, so it all makes sense in my mind and I guess that&#8217;s the most important thing. And I&#8217;m happy the way I&#8217;m striking it. Couple loose shots today that I&#8217;m not so happy with, but overall it just justifies what I&#8217;m doing and especially when I play well.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ardmore, PA (Sports Network) &#8211; Most players struggle to fight back from a sextuple-bogey, but Sergio Garcia did his best. The Spaniard started his third round on the 11th tee, as the championship finally got back on track after Thursday&#8217;s weather delays. He dropped shots on two of his first four holes to slip to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[224],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pga"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1557\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}