SAN ANTONIO — Players understood the problems Saturday before they hit their first shots.

The wind was humming. The temperature was plunging. Little would be easy at the Valero Texas Open.

Third-round leader Brian Harman began four shots ahead and ended with a lead of three. All he did was play an even-par round of two birdies and two bogeys. The pair of 66s he shot Thursday and Friday seemed like a different tournament from a different time, back when a springtime afternoon in Texas did not require sweaters and quarter-zips, as it did Saturday at TPC San Antonio.

Players arrived on a gray and moody 60-degree morning with the wind steady at 15 miles an hour out of the north. Gusts reached 27.

Keeping the ball out of the oaks, cedars and cacti already is a challenge at the Oaks Course. It became even more of one in the third round of the tournament that directly precedes the first major championship of the year. The average score through two rounds was 71.6 It rose Saturday to 73.8, which explains why and how Harman, the winner of The 2023 Open Championship, found himself with an uncomfortably comfortable margin as he tries to win his fourth career title.

“Just a tough day, man,” Harman said. “When you get around this place and the wind blows and the pins are tucked, it’s just a really hard day.”

It certainly was for most of the field. Twelve holes saw fewer than 10 birdies the entire day. No one made birdie on the par-3 13th, long and playing directly downwind to a bouncy green. The 444-yard ninth, right into the face of the wind, played to average score of 4.57. Seven players shot rounds under par.

The high Sunday is expected to be 63. The wind will return, with gusts of up to 32 miles an hour.

“You go out and do your best,” Harman said when he heard the forecast. “I don’t know what a score looks like. You just hit good shots and try to make putts, and if you miss the green, you get up and down.”

Sounds like the Saturday that Harman put together in South Texas. He ranked first in Strokes Gained: Tee to Green, gaining 8.5 shots on the field. He ranked second in SG: Approach the Green, with an advantage of nearly six strokes. He ranked fifth in SG: Putting. He took only 24, many of them in the 4- to 5-foot range for par. Harman tied for 11th in Scrambling.

That’s the kind of portfolio that kept the lead over the small number of players who scored well at the Valero.

One of them, Andrew Novak, shot 3-under 69. He finished at 9-under, in second alone.

“I made sure not to put myself in any disastrous spots,” said Novak, winless through 97 starts on TOUR.

He notably sailed his tee shot well right on the par-3 16th, the hole with the bunker in the middle of the green. His ball hit the lining of the spectator bleachers. It bounded onto the surface, settling 5 feet away. He holed it for his fourth birdie of the side — and took the momentum to the short par-4 17th, which he also birdied.

“I can’t get that break and miss the putt,” he said.

Tom Hoge shot 4-under 68, a clean-card round of no bogeys that only one other player, two-time Valero champion Corey Conners, had a chance to match. Conners was sailing through his round, 5-under through 16 holes with an eagle on No. 17, until a bogey-double bogey finish to drop him into a tie for 10th.

“Just tried to make as many pars as I could,” Hoge said.

Keith Mitchell (1-over 73), who shot 64 just two days ago, ended in fourth place alone, five shots out of the lead held by Harman. Sam Valimaki (2-under 70), Chad Ramey (2-under 70) and Ryo Hisatsune (1-over 73) finished at 6-under. It would take a lot of disastrous spots from Harman for anyone that far back to win on a Sunday of more wind and cold.

“I certainly know I can do it,” Harman said. “But the guys that are behind me, they’re hungry, man. They’re coming.”