Australia's last Open Championships hope Marc Leishman eyes top-four finish as Scottie Scheffler unreachable
With an eve-of-final-round pint of Guinness and the alluring thought of doing something 'really, really silly' out on the Royal Portrush links, the 41-year-old Victorian reckons he still has plenty to play for in Sunday's finale.
Leishman kept the Aussie flag flying with a three-under 68 in benign conditions on the Dunluce links during Saturday's third-round 'moving day', happy to shoulder the load after all his eight compatriots failed to make the cut for the weekend.
He's tied for 22nd place, 10 shots adrift of unbackable leader Scottie Scheffler, with even Leishman accepting that being so far behind the world No.1 makes the idea of him winning the Jug a decade after he finished runner-up in a playoff at St Andrews seem wholly unfeasible.
But he's only six shots behind the best of the rest, Li Haotong, and has eyes on a top-four finish which would guarantee him a return to both next year's Masters, after a three-year absence, and a place at the 2026 Royal Birkdale Open.
'Obviously there's the carrot dangling to try to get into the top-four,' Leishman mused.
'Yes, you want to do something silly and try to go crazy low, but you also want to make sure you give yourself a chance to get into the other majors.
'Probably more so looking at that. I'm nine back at the moment, probably going to be more than 10 back at the end of the day the way he (Scheffler) is playing,' added Leishman when he finished, while the world No.1 was still strutting his stuff out on course.
'That will be too many shots, unless I do something really, really silly. He's probably going to get to 20-under! I'm not going to shoot 56.'
The LIV Golf star, in fine form after winning his maiden event on the Saudi-run circuit at Trump National Doral in Miami in April, smiled: 'Hopefully I can do something silly tomorrow and try to sneak into that top five or 10.'
He hasn't played in any of the last 10 majors since his move to LIV but still didn't feel the pressure of being the only Aussie on view.
'It's been a while, but something you can slide back into pretty easily. It's what we want to do, play majors, win majors. I've not been in them for a while, but happy to be back,' said the man who's enjoyed three top-10 finishes at the British Open.
On Saturday, starting at one under, he made a woeful start when three putts from 40ft at the first led to an immediate bogey, but he responded swiftly with a brilliant tee shot to within two foot of the pin at the short third and then sank a 12-footer for another birdie at the fifth.
A delightful approach to four foot at the 11th provided further encouragement and though finding the fairway bunker at the long 12th led to a bogey six, he again bounced back, this time in spectacular fashion at the short 13th when he holed a 34ft birdie putt.
His third birdie two of the round came at the 16th when he holed from the fringe of the green.
'I felt really good today actually. If I'd played the par-fives better, I could have had a really low one, but played them at one-over. Hopefully I'll save it all for tomorrow.'
And the key ingredient for success? 'Yeah, probably another Guinness for sure,' smiled Leishman after a quick check of the watch.
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