PALM HARBOR, Fla. — Jim Furyk has gone 58 tournaments over 32 months without winning on the PGA Tour. That doesn't make the final round of the Transitions Championship any more important than it would have been in good times.
"It's not really, 'I want to show you' or anything like that," Furyk said after shooting a 4-under 67 to open a three-shot lead. "It's more that I just want to win a golf tournament."
Furyk has heard one question — "What has kept you from winning?" — far too often since his victory in the 2007 Canadian Open. With a round as flawless as the spring weather in Florida, he put himself in great position to answer it. He made consecutive birdies early on the back nine, and kept bogeys off his card for his first 54-hole lead in nearly three years.
Pressure? No more than usual.
Furyk was at 11-under 202, with a strong group of contenders behind him.
Defending champion Retief Goosen birdied the last hole of a roller-coaster round that gave him a 1-under 70, part of four-way tie for second. The others at 8-under 205 were two past champions at Innisbrook — K.J. Choi (67) and Carl Pettersson (70) — and Bubba Watson, who has never won on tour.
Padraig Harrington, a three-time major champion who hasn't won since the 2008 PGA Championship, went 14 holes without a birdie to fall out of the lead, then dropped another shot on the 18th hole for a 72 that left him four shots behind.
HASSAN II TROPHY: At Rabat, Morocco, South Africa's Louis Oosthuizen shot a 9-under 64 to take a two-stroke lead over Wales' Rhys Davies in the Hassan II Trophy.