British Open 2017: Leaderboard, live coverage, results and more from Saturday’s round

Just as they did on Saturday, Americans Jordan Spieth and Matt Kuchar will play together in the final round of the 146th Open Championship on Sunday. Spieth is the 54-hole leader at Royal Birkdale with a score of 11 under par, and Kuchar’s 8-under mark is right behind him atop the leaderboard. Spieth is trying to complete the third leg of the career grand slam at 23 years old. Kuchar’s gunning for his first major win.

Twenty-year-old Canadian Austin Connelly and U.S. Open winner Brooks Koepka are still in the picture at 5-under. It’s not impossible that one of them makes a charge. Branden Grace and Hideki Matsuyama, both at 4-under, are still nominally in it, too. (Grace is coming off the lowest-scoring major round ever shot.) It’s still possible that someone outside the final group wins. This situation isn’t quite like last year’s at Royal Troon, where Henrik Stenson and Phil Mickelson were a country mile ahead of the rest.

Jordan Spieth leads The Open Championship after 54 holes. If Spieth can hold his advantage for 18 more, he’ll win his third career major — and complete a third leg of the career grand slam — less than a week before his 24th birthday.

Spieth has had a brilliant young career, and that’s included both extraordinary highs and devastating lows on major Sundays. Closing out these championships is difficult, but Spieth is now so experienced in these situations that it’s hard to bet against him. He finished his third round by sinking a birdie putt from the fringe on No. 18.

Saturday at The Open Championship has been one of the more enjoyable major championship rounds in recent memory. Birdies are dropping, scoring records are falling, and the biggest names in the game are all on or around the leaderboard.

And one of the most fun spots on the course, and the broadcast, was the short par-4 fifth hole at Royal Birkdale. The R&A moved the tees way up, enticing the field to go for the green. The big hitters do not need drivers and almost everyone is going for it.

If you were working in a laboratory to construct prime golf television, you’d be hard-pressed to construct a better Saturday afternoon than what we’ve had so far in the third round of the Open Championship at Royal Birkdale.

With a rare day filled with sunny and calm conditions off the Southport coast in England, Jordan Spieth hasn’t let up a bit after sleeping on a 36-hole lead overnight. A mistake free 3-under-par 32 to open the front nine on Saturday has the 23-year-old in prime position to win the third leg of the Career Grand Slam from out front on Sunday afternoon. But while he’s created a small bit of distance between himself and the rest of the pack, plenty of big names are still within striking distance. Playing partner Matt Kuchar, still in search of his first major title at 39, stands just two behind Spieth at 7-under-par.

Every time anyone comes close to posting 63 in a men’s golf major championship, Johnny Miller becomes a part of the story. He may not want to be and it may not be fair, but it’s a given that Twitter and the coverage alike will light up with Johnny jokes and commentary. When Branden Grace threatened, and then broke, the majors scoring record with a 62 at the British Open on Saturday, there were as many tweets about Johnny as there were about Grace.

Miller’s 63 at the 1973 U.S. Open at Oakmont is arguably the greatest round of all time. Miller is, um, protective of that round and its meaning and he’s referenced it juuuust a few times over the years. He has throttled down somewhat on discussing it on-air, but it’s still a dynamic of all these broadcasts whether he wants it to be or not.

At long last, we finally have a 62 at the men’s golf major championships. After years of challenges and multiple 18th hole interventions from unseen forces that made it seem like we’d never get a 62, Branden Grace finally delivered the magic number at The Open Championship.

Grace is a super talent and has contended at multiple majors in his young career, but this was flawless from start to finish and the biggest moment of his career. Grace called it a “special day” and he didn’t even have to sweat it out on the 18th hole as we’ve seen on an almost annual basis with all the 63s over the years. Grace needed only a tap-in par to set the new record and post an 8-under 62 that has him now tied for second place at the 146th Open.

You hear about the lucky breaks and bounces in golf at The Open Championship more than any other major. Two players may hit two equally poor shots and end up in completely different positions. We see it repeatedly across all tours, but at The Open, where you never know what kind of junk a wayward ball is flying into, you’re truly at the mercy of the golf gods, if you believe in that kind of thing.

On Friday, Brooks Koepka’s worst shot of the day just dodged a gorse bush that would have been death and ended up in some trampled-down hay that allowed him to put a full swing on the ball. No harm. Justin Thomas hit an awful shot into the junk, and took three hacks to get it out, nearly lost his club, eventually lost his ball, made a 9, and missed the cut.

We’re less than three hours into the third round of The Open Championship but it appears Royal Birkdale will be there for the taking on moving day. Colin Montgomerie made the observation early on Saturday morning, saying the players needed to feast on the Birkdale course in what had shaped up to be benign conditions.

Most of the players in the early wave of tee times are doing just that, including the player who was off first in the morning. Shaun Norris made the cut on the number and had a tee time all to himself (using a non-competing marker) on Saturday morning, going off as a single at 4:20 a.m. ET (9:20 a.m. local in Southport). Norris, playing with a nice pace with the marker, posted four birdies in his first 10 holes. That’s the kind of scoring that just wasn’t available on Friday for most of the field, and Norris is demonstrating from that very first game that a charge can be made at leader Jordan Spieth.

After wet and rainy conditions on Friday forced a climbing cutline at the Open Championship and few scores in the red, golfers will hope for a little more calm from Mother Nature at Royal Birkdale on Saturday. Jordan Spieth take a two-shot lead at 6-under 134, into the weekend.

You can stream the Open beginning at 4:30 a.m. ET using the Golf Channel’s broadcast simulcast stream. Golf Channel will show it on television, while NBC takes over coverage beginning at 7 a.m.

Jordan Spieth survived rainy, windy conditions at Royal Birkdale on Friday to take a two-stroke lead after the first two days of the Open Championship. You can watch him try to push the gap further on Saturday on NBC.

Coverage begins at 4:30 a.m. ET — 10:30 a.m. local time in northwest England — on the Golf Channel. NBC picks up the coverage beginning at 7 a.m. You can stream the entire round via Golf Channel’s broadcast simulcast stream.

The third day of the 146th Open Championship at Royal Birkdale will get underway early Saturday morning. The third round starts in the wee hours of the morning on the American East Coast, and it continues into the early afternoon. The first golfers have been teeing off around 4 a.m., but some of the bigger names on Saturday morning will tee off towards the end of the group.

The last pairing of the morning features the board’s leader in Jordan Spieth. He’ll tee off at 10:55 a.m., along with Matt Kuchar, who is in second after Friday’s round. Spieth finished his Friday outing at one-under, facing some tough weather conditions. Rory McIlroy also had a good round on Friday, shooting 2-under to move up 52 spots to tied for sixth.

With winds up to 35 mph and rain that caused R&A officials to call a 15-minute break in play while the greens were squeegeed, Jordan Spieth broke free of a three-way tie at the Open Championship to take a two-stroke lead. Just eight of 156 golfers posted rounds below par for the day at Royal Birkdale.

“There was a couple periods where it was as bad as we had last year on Friday (at the Open),” Spieth said on the Golf Channel broadcast. “It was off and on. Overall it wasn’t as bad as we thought it was going to be. We thought it was going to be constant rain, sideways rain, sheets of rain. ... We got a horn to blow, and we got some favorable conditions for an hour at a time here or there.”