Day three at the 149th Open: What they said after the third round

"I was definitely not swinging it freely today, I was a little all over the place with iron shots. Felt like I kept the round together at the end there.

"The R&A wasn't happy with the low scoring, I think they put some pins out there that were very questionable but, you know, it was tough so I was glad I could hold it together.

"I'm excited, I'm very excited. It's a great position and I need to play well tomorrow and see if I can get rid of those loose swings."

"I don't have much experience on links golf, and pretty much all the highlights in my head are from this week. Thankfully there is quite a few. Hopefully we can just use that momentum from the first three days and just bring it into the last 18. It's going to be a grueling 18, but I look forward to it.

"It's a position you want to be in. As an athlete, golfer, you want to be in this position. I love it, so I really look forward to tomorrow."

"I like where my game is at. I like the strategy I have in place. I like my game plan. I think if I stick to that tomorrow, I feel like I'm driving it great and ironing it really well, so hopefully can keep doing that. I know I'll give myself a ton of chances, and like you said, get a few more putts to drop in, and it could be a really special round."

"I got off to a slow start. I was not hitting it very good at the beginning of the round, but I did a good job of kind of hanging in there. I had some really nice up-and-downs to start the day, on 1, made a nice putt on 3 and again on 5. I really worked my way into the round.

"After that I was a little bit frustrated, wasn't able to get anything going on the back nine, I wanted to make a few more birdies. Still overall can't be too upset with under par at a major, but still within striking distance for tomorrow."

"Really good round. Played good golf. Had some really good highlights.

"And, again, because of the weather conditions it's easy to think it could have been a little bit better, but the pin locations were no joke. I don't know if on TV you could appreciate it, but those are some of hardest pin locations collectively I've ever seen."

"I think that was the best golf I've ever played in such an important tournament.

"I'm very, very proud of myself that I was able to forget about it (an 8 at 14 at driving out of bounds), and I'm coming in with two birdies, I'm very happy with that. I'm proud of myself. I will give everything tomorrow to get a good result this week."

"I have mixed emotions, to be honest, because I played great. I left a lot of shots out there. 1-under was probably the worst score I could have shot, which was very disappointing on a day like today because I felt like I could have shot 3-, 4-, 5-under out there today, and I would have been right in the tournament.

"I'm disappointed, but I'm kind of proud of myself how I battled back and how I finished. I holed three nice putts on 16, 17, 18. But other than that kind of -- I missed four putts, I'd say, inside four or five feet today, which you can't do on days like today, which is disappointing."

"Pretty much the same as the last couple days. I've really drove it well. Iron play has been decent. I just found some putts that weren't going in early on, and thankfully it happened today.

"Hopefully I can just keep doing what I'm doing, keep hitting it the way I'm hitting it and keep seeing the putts going in, and hopefully we can get a high finish."

"Sort of a tale of two nines. I played great on the front nine, hit some really good iron shots and converted some putts and really got it going. Then the back nine played tough. They're sort of tucking the pins away. They've stretched the golf course out to as long as it can play.

"It's just a matter of trying to keep that going and try to turn those nine-hole stretches into 18-hole stretches, and then those 18-hole stretches into whole tournaments. It's getting there."