WGC-HSBC Champions 2016 Round 3 - Matsuyama is strong at heart  05:42, 29/10/2016

At 24, he has far more experience than most might think. He may only have turned professional at the end of 2013 but he was at the very top of the amateur game as long ago as 2010 when he won the first of his consecutive Asian Amateur titles. His coach talked of how much stronger he was getting via a fish-based diet before saying that there would never be anything as strong as his heart.

Not smile or get temperamental on the golf course, the 24-year-old golfer impressed with his calm and patient game.

His 68 of today was altogether different to his 66 and 65 of the first and second rounds. Then, he was playing aggressively and reeling off the birdies – 19 in total – whereas the 68 was more about keeping a bogey off his card. The last of his birdies – it came at the 18th – was crucial as far as he was concerned in that it had enabled him to sit down to dinner with three shots between himself and the wonderfully tenacious Knox.

Matsuyama says that his fourth-round play will be dictated mostly by the weather and the pin positions, though he is also aware that the players to his rear will be making their share of birdies as the go on the attack. “I know I’m going to have to make some birdies but I think it might be more important not to make any bogies.”

Matt Kuchar, of the four Americans, detonated the biggest Chinese cheer of the day when he had an ace at the 17th. Of the nine aces he has had across his career, he said that this was the most disappointing. Seconds before he hit from the tee, he was told that the handsome Cadillac on offer for a hole-in-one had been withdrawn for today’s play because the length of the hole had been reduced to under the 200 yard mark and therefore negated the relevant insurance conditions.

Kuchar reported on how he and Sergio Garcia had been laughing at the injustice of it all when Henrik Stenson, the third member of the party, had stepped forward with an apology.  The Swede was the player who had asked that they move from the chewed-up back tee on to one in better shape.

Source: HSBC Golf.