Every year this tournament allows players to feel good about themselves until Saturday afternoon, then begins letting blood. By Saturday, a player's mental game better be as good as his short game. All the maxims kick in: Play for pars. Fairways and greens. Be careful out there.

"I'm just glad to be off the course," decided Sergio Garcia, speaking for a majority of the leaders. Garcia called his 1-over-par round "one of the best 71s I've ever shot."

The wind rose up in the afternoon. The greens were Prohibition dry. The only two players on the leaderboard who broke par Saturday were Tim Clark and Retief Goosen. Goosen is a former Open champ with the perfect Open temperament: as excitable as a potted plant.

The day belonged to the sort of weirdness only this event can provoke: Twenty-foot putts rolling 50 feet past the hole, players putting from fairways, approach shots landing in the rough, popping out and rolling another 75 yards. Garcia calling pin placements "real pieces of work."

The star of the day wasn't Phil or Jeff or some Shigeki or another. The footlights belonged to the 195-yard par-3 7th hole. It was more fun than second-grade recess.

The problem - or the punch line, if you were watching and not playing - was the slope. That, and the fact the speed of all the greens had been ratcheted up a mach or two since Friday. Turn over a soup bowl. Try to stop a marble on top of it. That was the seventh green Saturday. "Either it goes in," Tiger Woods said, "or it goes off the green."

At the seventh, then-co-leader Shigeki Maruyama watched a 20-foot birdie putt zoom 50 feet past the hole and down the slope. His playing partner and fellow leader Mickelson had a 10-footer for par that hit a spike mark, jumped left and rolled 15 feet down the hill.

Smilin' Phil looked like someone had just poured acid in his retinas. He marked the ball the instant it stopped, lest it change its mind and roll to Queens. He left with a double bogey.

Earlier, Daniel Chopra, better known as Woods' partner for the day, had chipped from 40 feet across the seventh green. The chip rolled 40 feet past the hole. Chopra, unrattled, sank the comebacker for the weirdest par of the day.

Chopra had dark brown hair Tuesday. On Saturday, it was off-white. We assume Chopra dyed it, though given the course conditions Saturday, maybe it went that way all by itself.

As for Woods: He completed a fully dull third round with a workingman's 73. Tiger won't be a factor today unless the wind howls. He's 4 over par and all but an afterthought. Woods is in a slump or a lull. Either that or he's "getting close" as he puts it. Regardless, the man chasing Jack Nicklaus' record for career major titles has, in the last two years, as many major titles as Barbara Nicklaus.

The Open gets them all, sooner or later. By this afternoon, they'll have used every shot in their bags. And all their survival skills. If you're handicapping, weed out Clark, Maruyama, Fred Funk and the fast-fading Jeff Maggert. Lean on Goosen and Ernie Els, former champs who know how to play the Open (patient, bloodless) and not Mickelson, who's still learning.

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