Woods and Perry share NEC lead

Tiger Woods got himself out of two tricky spots this morning to be tied for the lead with fellow American Kenny Perry entering the final round of the NEC world championship in Akron.

Ireland’s Paul McGinley remained only one behind by matching the world number one’s three-under-par 67.

The three front-runners were among 20 players who had to finish off their third rounds at 7.30am following yesterday’s thunderstorms.

Perry hoped he had only one shot to play, but it turned out to be two.

He missed a birdie attempt from just under 10 feet on the last and so failed to equal Lee Westwood’s superb Saturday 63.

Woods, meanwhile, returned to the trees down the left of the 667-yard 16th. He was lucky to be able to have a swing, got the ball back on the fairway and then struck a 185-yard six-iron over the lake to 22 feet.

After two-putting for par there and on the next the Masters and British Open champion went right off the tee at the 464-yard last and was in the trees again.

On Friday a similar cost led to a double-bogey six, but this time he manoeuvred the ball to within 25 feet of the flag and two-putted again.

McGinley’s first shot was a chip from over the back of the green. He got it down to five feet, made that and almost came up with a spectacular birdie at the 18th.

His drive went into the edge of the rough and his seven-iron from there stopped short of the green.

But from almost 70 feet he very nearly made it.

“I’m obviously in a great position with a chance of winning,” said the Dubliner. “But unfortunately conditions have turned against me.

“The course is softer now and it certainly favours somebody like Tiger. My two drives this morning stopped dead.

“It’s night and day compared to how it was, but I don’t want to get on a negative path of thinking.

“I’ve still got to play my game and I’d like to play the round of my life. It would mean an awful lot to win.”

The 38-year-old was Europe’s match-winning hero of the 2002 Ryder Cup, unbeaten in last year’s victory and a World Cup winner with Padraig Harrington in 1997.

But he has won a mere three of 355 European tour events going back to 1989 and nothing on the scale of a World Golf Championship.

Darren Clarke is the only European to have tasted success in the WGC series, the Irishman winning the Match Play in 2000 and the NEC two years ago.