Saturday At The Genesis
Jacob Bridgeman shoots 64 to take a six-stroke lead over Rory McIlroy and has a shot at multiple tournament records on Sunday. Plus, Jon Rahm is still appealing his way out of a Ryder Cup future.
Augusta National has Amen Corner.
Riviera has…the 10th, 11th and 12th holes.
Barranca Bend? Rhinestone Rim? Hogan’s Dark Alley? Eh.
Hey ChatGPT, what would Herb Wind call Riviera’s 10-12 stretch?
On second thought, there’ll be plenty of time to workshop a name for the three holes that have become the most pivotal stretch for those hoping to conquer Riviera. Jacob Bridgeman reinforced the need to seize on Nos. 10-12 en route to tying the tournament’s 54-hole record with a 194 total. He leads Rory McIlroy (66-65-69-200) by six.
During a moving day where only Bridgeman seemed to get the memo among the leading groups, the 54-hole Genesis Invitational leader played holes 10-12 in 3-3-3 in a robust four-under-par run that saw his lead jump to six strokes.
With the modern-day polyester-clad Adonis’ embrace of advanced military rucking and beet smoothies, they’ve rendered the 10th and 11th into holes so attackable that even Alex Noren goes for them.
Capitalizing on the vulnerable status of the short par-4 and straightaway par-5, before surviving the normally brutal par-4 12th, has become essential to conquering Hogan’s Alley.
On a crisp, comfortable, and sunny Saturday supported by a sellout gallery that needed an approach inside five feet to applaud (😳), McIlroy played Nos. 10-12 in 5-4-4. The four-shot difference between our two leaders vaulted Bridgeman into the six-stroke cushion that he looks unlikely to lose on Sunday.
A self-described scoreboard watcher who has “always wanted to know what I needed to do,” Bridgeman knew what he’d done after a six-iron approach set up Saturday’s 12th hole birdie.
“It was cool to see that I had opened up a gap and see that the other guys weren’t really making moves,” he said.
Bridgeman’s four-under-in-three-hole masterpiece included an eight-inch putt for eagle at the 583-yard par-5 11th. He made the only eagle three at No. 11 on Saturday and was one of just eight to birdie the 12th. No one else in the top 15 played the stretch better than 2-under-par.
“I tried to hit it as soft as I could and hit a high fade, and I think the wind kind of gusted a little bit and carried it a little bit farther than we thought,” Bridgeman said of a 265-yard 7-wood shot that just missed becoming an albatross. “Right when I hit it, I saw it taking off and I knew it was going to be nice, and then it hit right over that slope. [The] crowd kind of jumped a little bit and were cheering, I thought it went in. Then I heard the “ohhhh,” and I knew it missed. That was one I was trying to be a little bit conservative and it turned out to be amazing.”
The shot on 11:
Bridgeman’s 194 total ties Joaquin Niemann’s 54-hole tournament record set in 2022 and positions the 26-year-old former Clemson star to break the tournament scoring record, the oldest standing 72-hole mark on the PGA Tour. Lanny Wadkins’ 20-under-par performance from 1985 isn’t the only bit of history in reach: Bridgeman could equal or surpass the largest winning margin in Los Angeles/Glen Campbell/Nissan/NorthernTrust/Genesis history: Phil Rodgers’s 1962 runaway by nine strokes at Rancho Park, the same week Jack Nicklaus cashed his first check as a professional for $33.33.
Should Bridgeman prevail Sunday under the expected sunny skies and 70-degree high temperature, he will receive a $4 million check.
Bridgeman’s shot at winning comes a week after holding up final round play from a pebbly beach looks even more astounding considering…
This is his first ever visit to Riviera and on the type of poa annua greens he’s struggled with until accepting their vagaries (he said he hit a great 13-footer at 18 only to have it bump off line).
He hit only 7 fairways Saturday but gained seven strokes on the field by hitting 14 of 18 greens for an absurd 20’7” proximity average.
As the crack CBS statisticians noted, Bridgeman hit 12 approaches that set up a birdie or eagle putt inside 12 feet.
For his fine work to this point, Bridgeman earned himself a final day pairing with the current Masters champion, Rory McIlroy.
The two played together at last summer’s BMW Championship in Maryland when Bridgeman was battling to make the season-ending Tour Championship and a Masters invite.
“It was kind of a lot, I thought,” he said of the moment. “Then I got out there and he was super nice to me and super welcoming, and the fans were great as well. I think if it was my first time [playing with McIlroy], maybe it would be a little unsettling, but now I’m not worried about it.”
Other than a tenth-hole hiccup where he mishit a tee shot and struggled with the line of his par putt, McIlroy appears to be in fine form. He’s made only two bogeys through 54 holes after a week of scorecard blemishes at Pebble Beach. And there is a glimmer of hope heading into Sunday: he’s overcome a six-stroke lead twice: at the 2022 TOUR Championship and the 2016 Dell Technologies Championship.
“They can put the hole locations in really tricky spots out here,” McIlroy said after a 69 that saw him his 16 of 18 greens. “You can start to really second-guess your reads.”
Even with the greens still soft, the speeds never decreased, and McIlroy admitted he was surprised at the difficulty of Saturday’s moving day hole locations. They were an unusually stern mix of tough and diabolical.
Also…
Aldrich Potgieter (3rd/-12) shot 65 Saturday in his 31st PGA Tour round and first time playing Riviera. He leads the field with a 318.0 driving distance.
First-round co-leader Aaron Rai (4th/-11) posted a 66 and plays with Potgieter on Sunday.
World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler (T22/-5) shot a 66 to go with rounds of 74-68.
The field averaged 69.863 and played the 10th-12th holes -38 (3.667, 4.608, 3.980)
After a third-round 80, Sepp Straka will go out as a single Sunday at 7:05 a.m. The final pairing of Bridgeman and McIlroy go at 11:20 a.m.
Full third round highlights:
Saturday News Dump: Rahm’s Ryder Cup Future In Doubt
The DP World Tour announced the granting of “conditional releases to eight members to play in conflicting tournaments on LIV Golf during the 2026 season,” meaning each agreed to pay all outstanding fines, withdraw pending appeals, and participate “in additional stipulated DP World Tour tournaments, as well as associated media activity and promotion.”
