Australian PGA Championship: Steve Palmer's final-round preview, best bets

When to watch

Sky Sports Golf, 7am (delayed coverage)

Best bets

Min Woo Lee to win threeball
3pts 5-4 Sky Bet

Min Woo Lee to win the Australian PGA w/o Scott
1pt 4-1 BoyleSports

Story so far

Pre-tournament favourite Adam Scott leads by a shot going into the final round of the Australian PGA Championship, the home hero signing off with an 18th-hole birdie on Saturday to edge ahead at Royal Pines, Gold Coast, Queensland.

Scott, who has successfully converted 13 of his 18 previous three-round leads, is no bigger than 5-4 for victory. He won the event in 2013 at Royal Pines, but he has not won a tournament of any kind since the WGC-Cadillac Championship in March, 2016.

Scott is causing disagreement in the bookmaking community as to his chances of success. A few firms make him odds-on to further bolster his frontrunning statistics, but his long victory drought means just as many layers are happy to go odds-against.

Scott is one shot ahead of his good friend Wade Ormsby, with four players tied for third spot, another shot behind. The quartet in third includes rising star, Min Woo Lee, who is arguably the main threat to the favourite.

The action resumes at 8.57pm Saturday UK and Ireland time, with the leader teeing off at 1.20am Sunday.

Leaderboard
-10 Adam Scott
-9 Wade Ormsby
-8 Michael Hendry, Yechun Carl Yuan, Min Woo Lee, Nick Flanagan
-7 Alejandro Canizares, Nick Cullen
-6 Bryce Easton, Aaron Cockerill, Romain Wattel
-5 Anthony Quayle, Cameron Smith, Cameron Davis, Andrew Dodt, Brady Watt, Greg Chalmers

Best prices
5-4 A Scott, 5 W Ormsby, 8 M W Lee, 14 Y Yuan, 20 M Hendry, 22 N Flanagan, 30 C Smith, 35 N Cullen, 50 A Canizares, 70 bar

Final-round preview

Adam Scott has traditionally been a strong frontrunner, but a victory drought of more than three years and nine months is a significant psychological hurdle to overcome for a man who turns 40 in July.

Self-doubt must have crept into the mind of the former world number one over that winless streak and even in this low grade he seems far from certain to get the job done.

Scott was swinging superbly down the stretch in round three, closing with a textbook birdie at the difficult 18th, and his long-game assurance should see him stay in contention all the way on Sunday. But will his often fragile putting, although improved this year, come back to haunt him in a tight finish?

The key to the event is probably how much pressure is put on Scott in the early stages. He should be ultra-comfortable alongside Wade Ormsby – they and their families have been good friends for decades – in the final threeball. Nick Flanagan was full of promise when winning three times on what was the Nationwide Tour in 2007, but his career hit the skids and he is outside the top 1,000 of the world rankings. Scott should boss Ormsby and Flanagan, but there is danger elsewhere.

Min Woo Lee has clearly got the potential to become one of the greatest players in the world, possessing a magnificent swing full of effortless power, and carrying no obvious weaknesses. From just two shots behind – in the penultimate threeball – Lee could set a mark which Scott finds hard to match.

Obviously at this stage of his career – and with only category 18 status on the European Tour – Lee could be forgiven for tensing up and letting the chance to kickstart his immediate future slip away. But some youngsters are blessed with such a level of ability, they never feel any pressure – because there is a sense of inevitability that glory will arrive at some point. If the 21-year-old takes a patient, whatever-happens-today-I-am-going-to-become-a-superstar attitude to Royal Pines for round four, a maiden European Tour triumph could be in the offing.

Lee was a Racing Post Sport ante-post selection at 35-1, but a press-up at a generous 8-1 is a perfectly justifiable tactic going into round four. Slight preference is for the 4-1 with BoyleSports in a without Scott market.

The Camerons – Smith and Davis – can be expected to finish with a surge from five shots behind Scott. But both have probably given the leader too much of a start. Lee, with just a two-shot deficit to overcome, seems by far the biggest hurdle for Scott to overcome.

With Michael Hendry suffering with rib problems and Yechun Carl Yuan looking shaky in round three, Lee seems a solid investment for his round-four threeball (1.09am). Yuan has been so lacking in putting confidence that he switched to left-handed putting earlier this year – and tension on the greens will only increase on the day the cheques are handed out.

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