By Christopher Powers
Si Woo Kim’s victory at the 2017 Players Championship was an impressive one, punctuated by a bogey-free final round 69 that included nine straight pars to close it out. That week at TPC Sawgrass will likely hold up as the best of his career unless there is a major championship win in his future. But he has an opportunity to finish off an equally spectacular week tomorrow at the Valero Texas Open, where he is the solo 54-hole leader after a third-round 69.

That’s because a win would be a wire-to-wire victory for Kim, as he’s held the solo lead at the end of all three rounds. Saturday was the only day that was in doubt, as he arrived at the 18th tee tied at 14 under with one of his playing partners, Corey Conners. But after Conners laid up with his second and ultimately settled for par, Kim got up and down from a greenside bunker for birdie, his fourth of the day, to grab a one-shot edge at 15-under 201 heading into Sunday.

A win for Kim would be his third on tour, the last coming at the Players and the first at the 2016 Wyndham Championship, where he won by five strokes.

He’ll play again alongside Conners, who survived a 6-for-1 playoff at the Monday qualifier to earn the final spot in the field. If he were to pull off a win, he’d be the first Monday qualifier to win on tour since Arjun Atwal accomplished the feat at the 2010 Wyndham Championship. If you recognize Conners’ name, that’s because he held the 54-hole lead at last year’s Valspar Championship, where he faded on Sunday as Tiger Woods made a charge and came up one shot short of Paul Casey.

Just two back is 2016 Valero Texas Open winner Charley Hoffman, who posted the low round of the week, an eight-under 64 to vault 17 spots up the leader board. Hoffman played his final seven holes in five under, making four birdies and an eagle at the par-5 18th, where he hit his 283-yard second shot to 10 feet.

Scott Brown, Jhonattan Vegas and Kyoung-Hoon Lee are tied for fourth at 11-under 205. Jordan Spieth, who started the day just four back, is now eight off the lead following a third-round 73 that featured a front-nine 42 and a back-nine 31.