Howell heads Tiger going into final round

A remarkable spell of putting enabled David Howell to keep Tiger Woods behind him in the third round of the HSBC Champions tournament in Shanghai today.

But now comes the really hard part – trying to hold off the world number one in the final 18 holes of Asia’s richest-ever event.

The 30-year-old from Swindon, round in 68, goes into the final 18 holes on 16 under par, one ahead of Woods and also Australian Nick O’Hern. Both of them birdied the par five last for 67s.

Howell, joint halfway leader with fellow Englishman Nick Dougherty, actually began his round by missing a birdie chance of under three feet.

But it was far from a sign of things to come. He finished the front nine by sinking putts of 15, 25 and 35 feet – first for birdie, then for a bogey six after he had hooked his drive into a ditch and finally for a real bonus of a birdie after he had come perilously closing to pushing his approach into the lake.

Woods, having closed to one behind, three-putted the ninth, but then put his foot on the accelerator again with further birdies at the 11th and 12th.

Yet Howell showed he could withstand another attack, picking up more shots himself at the 10th and 13th, where another 25-footer found the target.

Back came the American again, this time with an eagle putt of similar length at the 563-yard 14th, but he followed that with a bad drive and bogey down the next and missed a four-foot birdie opportunity two holes later.

Woods, who was in the lake at the par five final hole in his second hole, birdied it on his return, but Howell finished as he started by missing one he would have expected to make.

The last clash between Woods and Howell came in the third round of the Masters in April. Woods won it 65-76, a round which contained seven successive birdies.

He went on to win, of course, but Howell, little known in the States at the time, came back with a 69 for 11th place on his debut, good enough for a return trip next spring and a huge boost to his confidence.

Apart from a two-month injury lay-off he has hardly looked back since, losing two successive play-offs before ending six years without a victory at the BMW International in Munich.

The former British boys’ champion, who holed the winning putt when Britain and Ireland’s amateurs beat an American side including Woods at Porthcawl in 1995, has climbed to 19th in the world and finished a best-ever seventh on the Order of Merit two weeks ago.

A win in the first event of the new campaign would be worth over £450,000 (€670,000) and could take him third in the Ryder Cup race ahead of Paul McGinley, who was generally thought to be assured himself of another cap when he won the recent Volvo Masters at Valderrama.