Lindell lost his direction in Saturday's shots – "We competed with Sergio Garcia to see who could hit the most crooked shot in turn."
Oliver Lindell played the third round of the Open de España with a score of 72 (+1). After an exceptionally eventful round, a score of +1 sounds like a minor victory. Often, such a score is disappointing at best, but today could have been even worse, especially as there was only one birdie on the card.
The Porvoo native, who fell to par overall, shares 54th place. Saturday was exceptional in that the problems were found in Lindell's short game. The putter even managed to embellish the scores a little. Fairway hits in the third round were poor, with an accuracy of 35 per cent (5/14).
"It was quite a round, as I had no idea where the ball was going. The shots ended up alternately to the right and left. The round got off to a 'nice' start when the first tee shot hit a tree, resulting in an immediate bogey. At first, it looked like the whole thing was going to fall apart," said Lindell.
Another unusual feature of the day's round was that the first birdie did not come until the 17th hole. There, the Finn hit a magnificent iron shot, so often seen after a bogey, just a metre from the flag.
Lindell managed to score an eagle on the 7th hole, which kept his round score reasonable. On the last hole, he still had a chance to finish his eventful round with a par score, but this did not happen.
"My putting was good today, even though the putt on the last hole, just over a metre away, rolled out. The problem was that my shots only hit the desired line a few times. I was competing with Sergio Garcia to see who could hit the most crooked shot of the day. I can't think of any single reason – the game just didn't get going the way I wanted it to at any point."
In the end, the uneven round did not drop the Finnish player much in the rankings, and good scores are still within reach on Sunday.
"If I had played to par today, I would actually have moved up the leaderboard, so in the end we managed to get a reasonable result. There were a few bright spots among them."
Switzerland's Joel Girrbach (-12), who was clearly out of the running for a place in the final at the start of the week, has now risen to the top of the leaderboard. The winner of the competition will earn a place in next season's Masters tournament and The Open, if they have not already qualified.