After chaotic day, Scottie Scheffler remains at top of Masters leaderboard

Which he was able to do. His round pivoted on No. 13, where he sank a 31-footer for eagle, bumping him up from third place to a share of the lead, which he then took over alone with a 11-foot birdie on No. 15. Then when he slipped with his fourth bogey of the day on No. 17, he closed the round with an eight-foot birdie on No. 18.

In contrast, Morikawa could not have been more consistent, opening with three straight birdies to close the gap with Scheffler to one shot. Though he briefly shared the lead when Scheffler slipped, his long string of pars could not elevate him further. He remained the only player with three straight sub-par rounds (71-70-69).

“Look, tomorrow, anything could happen,” said Morikawa, who is seeking his third major but his first Masters. “There’s still a lot of guys right beneath us. We don’t know what conditions are going to be like. The greens are getting firmer than I’ve ever seen out here.

“So it’s going to play a lot different from kind of what we’ve seen the first two rounds.”

Homa had failed to match par in any of his first four Masters — best finish: T-43 last year — so it was with some relief that he carded 17 pars with one bogey and is 5-under (67-71-73) entering the last round.

“If I catch myself thinking about what could go wrong, I let myself dream about what could go right,” Homa said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. I didn’t know what was going to happen today.

“If you told me I made no birdies today, I would have thought I imploded.”

Which is what DeChambeau was doing. Tied with Homa and Scheffler entering the day, he remained a shot back late in the day when his round fell apart on the par-15, where he chipped into the pond from behind a tree after clearing the same pond with his second. He two-putted for a double-bogey 7.

Things did not improve on No. 16, where he three-putt from 45 feet, completing a 5-shot tumble down the leaderboard. But the improbable closing birdie, where he drove into deep woods on the right, chipped out and then sunk his approach, left him four shots back.

“I just figured it was easier than putting. Joking obviously,” he said.

Heretofore, only once in Masters history has a Scandinavian player led here — Peter Hanson in 2012 — and for a while in the third round, it happened twice. Aberg (the Swede, by way of Texas Tech) and Denmark’s Hojgaard (a three-time European Tour champion) claimed brief leads before a bogey parade — Aberg going back-to-back, Hojgaard with four straight (40 on the back nine) — knocked them off pace.

“We try to stop the bleeding a little bit,” Hojgaard said. “If I knew how to do it, I probably would have done it. But yeah, there was a lot of good stuff anyway.”