McDowell on the move as Lowry fades at Workday Open

Graeme McDowell was headed in the right direction but it was a frustrating moving day shift for Shane Lowry on day three of the Workday Charity Open.

GMac fired four birdies and two bogeys in a two-under par round of 70 to creep inside the top-30 at five-under par.

The Northern Irishman finds himself a full 11 shots behind American Justin Thomas atop the board but only four shots outside the top-10 with a big week in his sights heading into Sunday.

After promising so much, however, the opposite is true for Shane Lowry who dropped 24 places down the board and outside the top-50 after returning a disappointing two-over par round of 74.

Having reached seven-under par at one point on Friday, the Clara man has struggled since with four bogeys and a double hampering his moving day efforts.

There were no such fears for the confident Thomas at the head of affairs, however who started the day trailing by three at Muirfield Village.

The world number 2 returned his second straight six-under par round of 66 to leapfrog halfway leader Collin Morikawa and lead the field by two at 16-under per.

“I knew that I was playing well so I just needed to keep doing what I was doing to try to move up one by one,” Thomas said.

“I couldn’t get to 14 unless I got to 12 first and I couldn’t get to 15 unless I got to 13. Just kind of keep making my way up one step at a time, or one birdie at a time.”

Thomas’ fine play sets up a mouth-watering finale to the inaugural tournament with the trio of JT, 23-year old Morikawa and 22-year old European star, Viktor Hovland lining out in the last group.

It looks to be a three horse race after Hovland matched Thomas’ 66 to get to 14 under with Morikawa a shot further back in third.

“It’ll be fun to hang with those guys tomorrow,” said Thomas . “But at the end of the day I’m worried about myself and trying to win a golf tournament and have a good round.”

Thunderstorms are expected for this evening’s round but that won’t worry Norwegian Hovland who has moved into contention for the first time since the PGA Tour restart.

“It’s really cool to be in this position after that bad start because … the past couple weeks I’ve had good first rounds and have kind of been up by the lead early on, but I’ve been kind of falling off,” Hovland said.

“I’m really proud of kind of how I was able to turn it around and just kind of play better and better every single day.”

Full scoring HERE