Sergio Garcia is just four holes away from his first Major championship title after blitzing his way to the top of the leaderboard at the US PGA Championship.
The Spaniard, who started his final round barely two hours after taking his 54-hole tally to one over, has since stormed to three under par through 14 holes.
It leaves him one stroke ahead of Padraig Harrington, who dropped a stroke on the 14th to fall back to two under, the same score as third round leader Ben Curtis.
Playing in three-man groups and with the back markers starting on the tenth tee to try and get back on schedule after losing half the day’s play to rain on Saturday, Curtis got off to a great start as playing partners J B Holmes and Henrik Stenson both found the trees to the left off the first tee.
Holmes’s chances all but imploded there and then as he tried to punch the ball out from under a low-branched pine, only to advance it a couple of yards and take a penalty drop.
Holmes, the 36-hole leader, took a triple-bogey seven, Stenson managed to get up and down for par but Curtis patiently took a birdie to go to three under.
Garcia and Harrington were playing together with Charlie Wi - all three started at one over par - with the Open champion making par and his two partners going to level par overall with birdies.
Garcia closed the gap on the par five second with an eagle to move to within a shot of Curtis and had a chance to move level with the American with a brilliant recovery shot at the seventh after driving wide right.
In gusting winds and increasingly heavy rainfall Garcia buried the birdie putt to move to three under after six with Curtis having played five alongside Stenson, who had birdied the second to move to one under.
Harrington, who had bogeyed the fifth, got back to level for the tournament with a birdie at six, while Curtis later birdied the same hole to go to four under.
Then Harrington began his charge. He collected strokes at the tenth, 12th and 13th to go three under, but a bogey at the 14th has cost him a share of the lead.
Curtis was also pegged back. He took bogeys at both the eighth and ninth and then the 11th to go one under, but a birdie at the next has him back at two under.
Garcia, meanwhile, is on a run of eight straight birdies pars, while Stenson is level par, one over for the day.
Elsewhere, Jeev Milkha Singh is four over par, alongside America’s Phil Mickelson. Andres Romero is one over par.
Fredrick Jacobson aced the par three 13th with a four iron from 193 yards.
