Warrior leads the blue train in Italy

This is a photo that will perhaps be framed at the French golf federation. Even if the archives have not been scrutinized, it is not certain that the leaderboard of a DP World Tour event has already been dominated by three Frenchmen almost at the end of the third round. This snapshot continued until the end of the first leg, with Matthieu Pavon leading the way ahead of Julien Guerrier and Romain Langasque. The three Blues dominated in turn but, at the end of the day, it was Julien Guerrier who posed as the Roman emperor.

While he has never won on the DP World Tour but has won the Challenge Tour twice (Open des Hauts de France and Irish Challenge in 2017), the one who has been working mentally with Raphael Jacquelin since last February scored a solid 66 with a birdie at 18 allowing him to take the lead alone. He savored: “I started with a bogey at 2 but I stayed focused on my game, patient, as my coach asks me. Raphael often tells me that I will make mistakes. It’s like that. I have to accept it. I’m going to call him to take stock before the day tomorrow. Playing with Romain is going to be fun”.

The best card of the day was signed by Romain Langasque (-9). It has no erasures. Enough to sign the course record with in particular a monstrous drive at 16, rewarded with an eagle. The tricolor felt on cloud nine, which propelled him to second place this Saturday (-11): “It was definitely one of the best days of my career. I drove very well, the putting was in place too. Conditions are good for birdies if you play well here. There are a lot of opportunities but I hadn’t been able to find the fairways much on the first two days. Between Friday’s 72 and this Saturday’s 62, the big difference was my drive (11/14 fairways, 16/18 greens in regulation). »

The two tricolors will however have to be wary of very dense competition and in particular of Adrian Meronk. The Pole (63rd in the world, already two successes on the DP World Tour) has only committed two bogeys in three days and does not seem determined to give much on Sunday (-11).

Leader at the start of this third round, Matthieu Pavon struggled a little to finish it, paying dearly for a double bogey in 16th. trophy (4th tied, -8). This is not the case for Victor Pérez, who had a very difficult Saturday (+3) which took him away from the top of the ranking (-2, 24th). Same observation for Levy and Sciot-Segrist (par, 37th), Lorenzo-Vera and Rozner (+1, 46th), Ko (+2, 53rd), Ravetto (+4, 62nd) and Brun (+11, 72nd), the latter having literally exploded (83) during this “moving day”. If a Frenchman leads the dance in Rome, another brings up the rear.