Haas surges to Valspar lead, seeks 7th PGA Tour win
Bill Haas has the 54-hole lead at the Valspar Championship, but the six-time PGA Tour winner said he hasn’t yet played his best golf.
“The game has been a hair off and even so far this week I feel like I’ve gotten a lot out of my game to be near the lead and so with that said, I got to be focused tomorrow and I’ve got to be able to accept a couple bad shots,” Haas said after shooting 4-under 67 on Saturday to take a one-shot lead over Graham DeLaet.
“What I’ve done every day, I hit a few and keep going at it. Make a few putts to keep myself in it.”
Haas, like the rest of the field, has struggled with the slow resurfaced greens. At this point, however, Haas believes there’s no room for excuses going into the final round.
“If you watched every group you would see a number of guys leave putts short,” he said. “All that is, you say come on, you learn it after 54 holes.”
Haas is looking for his first win since the CareerBuilder Challenge a year ago. However, it hasn’t been for a lack of chances. Since that last win in the California desert, Haas has seven top-10 finishes, including two this season. And while it’s been 15 months since he last won, Haas came up huge in the anchor match to clinch the Presidents Cup last October.
The leader expects a tight race on Sunday, which is a prospect he doesn’t mind on a golf course where it’s really tough to go low.
“It’s just every hole seems like all right, here we go again, which I think is good for tomorrow,” he said. “I think it’s going to keep me in the frame of mind that if I do bogey early it’s okay, people are making bogeys out here but, at the same time, you’re not seeing many runs of birdies out there.”
Ryan Ballengee is a Yahoo Sports contributor. Find him on Facebook and Twitter.
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