Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images
McDowell plays his second shot after a wayward drive on the 18th at Royal Greens Golf and Country Club on Saturday. He would go on to birdie the hole and earn a one-stoke lead at the Saudi International. 

By Kent Gray
Graeme McDowell and Victor Dubuisson will be reunited for the first time since their Ryder Cup heroics in 2014 with seemingly only one player close enough to upset their personal duel for the Saudi International on Sunday.

McDowell rode his luck with the putter to fire a four-under 66 on moving day at Royal Greens Golf & Country Club which played tough courtesy of blustery winds off the Red Sea and tightly tucked pins. The Northern Irishman, at -12, will take a one-stroke buffer over Dubussion into the final round after partnering the Frenchman to two foursomes points as Europe secured a third successive Ryder Cup win at Gleneagles.

Dubuisson signed for a bogey-free 65 while Malaysian Gavin Green, three adrift at -9 after a 70, looks the most likely to upset the McDowell-Dubuisson narrative. Defending champion Dustin Johnson, after starting the third round with four successive birdies before cooling off to an eventual 68, is one of three players at -7.

World No.1 Brooks Koepka (65) and Phil Mickelson (68) at -6 can’t be discounted either but six strokes back, the marquee Americans will have to go deep on Sunday and hope McDowell, Dubuisson and Green come back to them.

After dropping a shot on the 8th to cancel out a second hole birdie, McDowell’s putter came to the rescue. A 20-footer to save par on the 9th was followed by two fluky birdie putts from the fringe on 12 and 13, the former clattering pin, the latter an absolute monster on Royal Green’s toughest hole, before another gain on the 14th.

A wayward drive on 18 threatened to tarnish a terrific back nine but the 2010 U.S. Open champion recovered with a sumptuous approach to six-feet from 180-yards out for a closing birdie.

“My putt on nine was massive as I’d just bogeyed eight and the putter was cold,” McDowell said afterwards. “Those are the putts you look back on the round and say ‘that was the one’.

“The two putts from off the green on 12 and 13 are just massive bonuses at that point. You can’t expect to make those type of putts. Conditions were very tough today so I’m very pleased with that back nine.”

The last of McDowell’s 10 European Tour wins came at the Open de France in July 2014. He’s won twice on the PGA Tour in the intervening five and a half years including an event in the Dominican Republic last March. He’s converted 10 previous 54-hole leads into five wins.

Dubuisson owns a pair of Turkish Airlines Open titles (2013 and 2015) but has slid down the world rankings from a high of 15 to 478th, his lowest position since 2011.

A wrist injury that kept him sidelined for all but one event in 2018 is partly to blame and seems so too was the set of irons he’s been playing the past two years.

Dubuisson went bogey-free on Saturday. (Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images)

“I had a long chat with my coach after Abu Dhabi because it was the first time he came to the whole tournament, so he saw me play the whole four days and he said, ‘It’s not possible, your swing is good. Last year your swing was very good, it’s not possible that you hit the ball like this’.

“So I decided to take my old set of clubs that I was using two years ago from TaylorMade and I found my game into the wind again, so I’m quite happy now.”

Green was unable to match the heights of his opening rounds of 64 and 67 but is just happy to be in the hunt for a maiden European Tour title after battling to a level-par 70 on Saturday.

“It was brutal out there and couple of pins, they were tucked so far in corners,” said Green. “All we did was play to the middle of the greens and just try and take our two-putt and make par. Because par is a good score today.”