Mar18 vaughnleads

Vaughn Taylor was losing ground and trying not to lose his temper when he saw a leaderboard on the sixth tee that showed him seven shots behind Saturday in the Arnold Palmer Invitational Presented by MasterCard.

Imagine his surprise when he walked off the 18th with a hard-earned par and a two-shot lead. Early leaders Paul Casey and Tiger Woods were struggling and Taylor kept his cool.

On a wild day of shifting weather and changing fortunes, Taylor shot a 3-under 67 to seize control and set himself up for a chance to win a tournament where all the stars have come out to play.

The tough part is that most of them are still in the mix.

Ben Curtis. the former British Open champion who usually wins whenever he gets near the lead, had a 69 and will play with Taylor in the final group Sunday. Vijay Singh (67) was another shot back along with Tom Lehman (69), the former Ryder Cup captain who benched Taylor the first day of matches and now has to try to chase him down.

Fifteen players were within five shots of the lead, a group that includes Tiger Woods.

As badly as he played on Friday, Woods figured he had no business being in contention. As well as he hit the ball on Saturday, he figured there was no way he shouldn’t have been around the lead. He had to settle for 16 pars and a 70, leaving him five shots back and facing odds of having never won at Arnie’s place when he wasn’t in the lead.

Taylor was at 8-under 202 and will have to overcome two glaring statistics. He ranks 166th on the PGA TOUR in final-round scoring average, and his only two victories came at the Reno-Tahoe Open, the same week the top players were gathered at Firestone for a World Golf Championship.

“I’ve just got to play like I’ve been playing the last few days, and hope things go my way,” Taylor said.

Early in the round, it looked as if it would be a two-man race between Rocco Mediate and Paul Casey, who both reached 10 under. But as the weather shifted from chilly to mild and from gusts to a breeze, they went the opposite direction.

Mediate, who had a three-shot lead at the start of the third round, birdied the first and final hole and made a mess of it in between on his way to a 76. Casey made seven bogeys on the back nine and shot 73.

Singh, a three-time runner-up at Bay Hill, will be paired with the 48-year-old Lehman, who hasn’t won on TOUR in seven years.

It looked as though the leaders caught a break by teeing off in the afternoon — it usually works the other way around — because of the chilly, blustery conditions that made Bay Hill a brute.

Mediate made one of only two birdies at the opening hole to reach 10 under, and it turned into a two-man race when Casey fired off four birdies in a five-hole stretch to reach 10 under.

By the end of the day, neither was anywhere near the top of the leaderboard.

Mediate and Casey were seven shots clear of Taylor early in their round, but everything changed as quickly as the weather.

Casey chopped his way through the rough on the par-5 12th to begin his string of five consecutive bogeys when his swing failed him. Mediate didn’t make another birdie after No. 1. A two-shot swing cost him the lead at the par-5 sixth, and a double bogey on the 14th continued his spiral.

Singh matched Taylor with the best round of the day at 67 and had no idea how close that would leave him from the lead.

“Depending on the leaders,” Singh said. “If they don’t go crazy on the back nine, I think I have a shot tomorrow.”

They went crazy, all right. And he does have a shot tomorrow in the tournament where he has been runner-up three times.

Then again, just about everyone does.

That includes Woods, who showed a major improvement hitting the ball, but struggled once he got to the greens. He said poor posture caused him to miss so badly, a mistake that caddie Steve Williams finally detected on the 16th green.

“I had a chance to shoot 3 or 4 under, and I just didn’t do it,” Woods said.

He still has a chance on Sunday, along with a host of others.

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