Anirban Lahiri takes one-shot lead into Monday at PLAYERS Championship

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – Rain, wind, cold, and delays.

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Schedules were vaporized, shoes muddied. Time lost all meaning at THE PLAYERS Championship at TPC Sawgrass, so much so that Sam Burns – who didn’t even play Friday or Saturday – had to ask his caddie, Travis Perkins, what day it was.

“I really wasn’t even sure,” Burns said.

What’s important, assuming you remembered to set your clocks forward one hour, is that THE PLAYERS will end on Monday (no, really!), the eighth Monday finish in the history of the tournament and the fourth at the Stadium Course.

Play was suspended due to darkness at 7:32 p.m. Sunday and will resume at 8 a.m. Monday with 10 players either in the lead (Anirban Lahiri, 9 under) or within three.

Among them, Tom Hoge (one back), Sam Burns (two back), and Cameron Smith (three back) have won this season on the PGA TOUR. So that seems to at least make a modicum of sense. They have the pedigree; they’ve been playing well.

But there are other names on the board who would shock the world in the manner of Fred Funk, who was the surprise winner the last time THE PLAYERS Championship went to Monday, in 2005. (He was 48.) Lahiri is 209th in the FedExCup and 322nd in the world. He has no top-25 finishes in 12 starts this season but takes a one-shot lead over Hoge and Harold Varner III going into Monday.

“The nature of what we do, it’s unpredictable,” Lahiri said. “You just don’t know. You grind away, you keep chipping away, and when it clicks it clicks.”

A member of the 2015 and ’17 International Presidents Cup teams, Lahiri still has 25 holes to play Monday, and plenty of potential teammates for this year’s Presidents Cup at Quail Hollow near him on the leaderboard at TPC Sawgrass.

Two of them are even in his third-round threesome.

Smith (Australia) is three behind, and Joaquin Niemann (Chile) is five back after holing out for eagle from 68 yards at the ninth hole. (It might have been the shot of the third round except for Shane Lowry’s 124-yard hole-in-one at the 17th hole.)

“I think just be patient,” Smith said of what he needs to do to win. “I've played this golf course enough – I've birdied every hole around here a million times it seems like, and it's important not to get too ahead of myself.”

Francesco Molinari is 5 under on his third round with three holes remaining, 6 under total, three behind. Lowry and Molinari, who each won The Open Championship, are the only major winners among the top 17 players on the leaderboard.

Then there’s Sebastian Muñoz (Colombia), who started well before Lahiri, Smith, and Niemann and was 6 under through 14 holes and two off the lead.

Most players still in contention were in the early/late end of the draw, meaning they avoided the worst of the weather. Not so Daniel Berger. He’s 4 under through 13 holes of his third round, 6 under total, and fought the worst of the elements Saturday.

“Yeah, yesterday was one of those days where you felt like you could have shot 85,” he said, “but you really have to reset and get your mind right for the next day, and I feel like I did that, and I've been patient today and just got to continue that tomorrow.”

Paul Casey (7 under, two back) is 15th in the field in Strokes Gained: Putting, and converted for birdie from 53 feet, 4 inches at the 17th hole in the second round.

“I've got momentum,” Casey said. “I feel good about the position I'm in.”

Defending champion Justin Thomas isn’t out of the running at 4 under, five back. Although his chances took a hit when he doubled the seventh hole, he still has seven holes remaining in his third round, and needs only to look back to last year, when he hit the afterburners (64-68) to win here, for good vibes.

All are chasing Lahiri, who has won 18 times as a pro but never on the PGA TOUR. He grew up playing Army courses in India, where the fairways were so patchy as to necessitate preferred lies, and the greens were slow. Asked how Pete Dye’s iconic Stadium Course compares to them, he laughed. Translation: It doesn’t.

“It all comes down to how you play on the weekend,” Lahiri said, trying valiantly, as we all are, to make sense of what has happened here through the first four days.

He paused.

“This weekend,” he said, “which is Sunday, Monday.”