Johnson, Woods shoot 66s at Open

Associated Press

Pebble beach , Calif.

Dustin Johnson plays his best at Pebble Beach no matter what month, no matter what stage.

Hours after Tiger Woods came to life in the U.S. Open with his best round of the year to get into contention, Johnson turned in a prime-time performance that was every bit as good Saturday with a 5-under 66 to build a three-shot lead.

Johnson, the two-time defending champion in the Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, overpowered the course and birdied his last two holes, hitting 6-iron into the par-5 18th to leave him one round away from a major championship.

Woods, however, stole the show on a sunny afternoon along the Pacific Coast.

“It’s a process,” Woods said. “You have to just build. All the Opens I’ve won, I’ve had one stretch of nine holes where I put it together.”

It’s a testament to his game that he chose the back nine to do it at Pebble — the tougher nine, and the nine the leaders were playing with bright sunshine and brisk winds drying out the course and making the greens bumpy.

The highlight of Woods’ round will go down as his second shot on No. 18. Squirreled behind one of the two huge trees on the right side of the fairway, his caddie, Steve Williams, told him he was 260 yards away — the perfect distance to go for it. He crushed a 3-wood, hustled to his left, yelled at the ball, ‘C’mon, C,mon,’ then watched it land 15 feet from the pin.

A two-putt for a birdie and a round of 66 — only one stroke higher than the 65 he shot on opening day at Pebble in 2000, when he was a different player and he went on to win by 15.

On this day, though, memories of Torrey Pines were more apropos. Two years ago, he was injured, trying to turn a good Saturday into something better when he hit a chip shot from the side of the 17th green that came out of the rough hot, bounced once and somehow went in. He took his hat off, covered his face, laughed sheepishly. Didn’t mean that to happen. But sometimes it does.

Sort of like his putt on No. 17 at Pebble. Above the hole, 15 feet away, Woods said the only goal there was “don’t throw away a great round now.”

“The putt on 17 was a joke,” he said. “I’m just trying to get it close and walk out of there. And it happened to go in.”

It’s putts like those that can turn players into believers, though Woods never stopped believing, even when others might have.

His spiel after Friday’s round, when he was seven strokes out of the lead, buried in 25th, sounded more canned than condensed soup: He was close, just needed to make a birdie or two, get to par and anything could happen at a U.S. Open. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

He looked like nothing more than a dreamer after the second and third holes of Saturday’s round. A pair of bogeys. The worse one came on No. 3, when he drove the ball to 40 yards in front of the green, then tried to get a flop shot to lock up on the top right corner of the green — one of the many at Pebble that Tom Watson said made players feel like they were “putting over a herd of turtles.”

The shot ran off the green, into the rough. The bogey ballooned Woods to 6-over par, nine shots behind a leader who hadn’t even hit the course yet.

Eight birdies (and one more bogey) later, it was a different story. Woods looked like a genius. What’s new?

And for all the drama and trauma he got himself into over the past few months, he showed his game hasn’t gone too far away. He has still never come from behind on the last day of a major to win. That’s a big hurdle to overcome. But the thought of him winning major No. 15 this week certainly doesn’t seem like a stretch anymore, either.

“Well, I’ve got a long way to go before that happens,” he said. “It would feel good. I’ve won U.S. Opens before and it certainly didn’t feel bad.”

After the adventures of hitting right-handed and a miserable start, Phil Mickelson remained in contention heading into the final round.

Mickelson finished the third round at 1 over for the championship following a 2-over 73.