DECATUR, Ill., June 13, 2009 – If scores could look like bodies moving on a rugby field, today’s third round of the $125,000 Michelob ULTRA Duramed FUTURES Players Championship would have been a daylong scrum.

All day long, scores at Hickory Point Golf Club were clumped together with players clawing for the lead. At one point, the leaderboard was jammed in a five-way tie at six under until sixth-year pro Sunny Oh broke free and carded a 6-under 66 to grab the third-round lead at seven-under par 209. She was trailed one shot back by seven players deadlocked for a share of second.

But by day’s end, first-round leader Sofie Andersson of Angelholm, Sweden, had posted another round of 5-under-par 67 to regain the lead at 208 (-8). That gave her a one-shot lead over Oh (66) of Manhattan Beach, Calif., last week’s tournament winner Mina Harigae (68) of Monterey, Calif., and Christi Cano (70) of San Antonio – all tied for second at 209 (-7).

“Anyone can go really low out here because if you hit it close, you have a chance,” said Andersson, whose last tournament win came in 2007. “It was just pretty steady today. The ball striking that I had the first day came back today and I found my line with the putter. I had great speed and my putts rolled in.”

Andersson carded six birdies and one bogey and punctuated her round with a birdie on the 18^th hole. She striped her final drive 267 yards. With a gap wedge from 103 yards, she dialed in her approach shot to four feet and converted for the birdie.

“I had that line and all I thought was, ‘straight back and straight through,’” said Andersson, a third-year professional who played collegiately at the University of California-Berkeley.

But the Swede knows there are plenty of players who will be fighting down to the finish in Sunday’s final round of the Tour’s only major championship.

“Tomorrow’s going to be a shootout, it really is,” said Ashley Prange (71) of Noblesville, Ind., who is tied for fifth at 210 (-6) with Kylene Pulley (70) of Kokomo, Ind., Lisa Ferrero (71) of Lodi, Calif., and second-round leader Kim Welch (73) of Sacramento, Calif.

“This is what it’s all about – having a lot of people in it,” added Prange. “You have to be aggressive and if you’re not, you’re going to get burned.”

Oh used the shootout mentality she had gained this year playing Monday qualifying tournaments on the LPGA Tour to charge up the leaderboard today. A 2008 winner on the Duramed FUTURES Tour who earned 2009 LPGA membership, Oh has spent the entire season showing up for the Monday mini-tournaments just for a spot in LPGA tournament fields. She missed getting into tournaments four times by one shot, and once, missed getting in after a seven-hole playoff. In the only LPGA tournament field she made, she missed the cut.

So this week, Oh returned to the Duramed FUTURES Tour just to have a chance to play four competitive rounds of golf. She found herself struggling with her driver and borrowed one from Tour member Christine Cho. That straightened out her driving woes and then her putter got hot. Oh needed only 24 putts today in a bogey-free round that featured six birdies and displayed the mettle she has used while trying to earn a spot each week in LPGA tournament fields.

No doubt, Sunday’s final round will be the type of shootout that Oh has faced all season.

“It’s a one-day thing,” she said. “It’s not over yet. I’ll take it one shot at a time, just like a Monday qualifier.”

But while Andersson and Oh will be trying to win again, Harigae hopes to win twice in as many weeks. She rolled in four birdies today in her bogey-free round, including a 25-foot birdie “gift” on the ninth green and a 12-foot birdie putt on the 18^th to move the very determined rookie within one shot of the lead.

“I’m hitting it pretty good and the thing I like about this course is you can just rip it all day,” said the winner of last week’s Ladies Titan Tire Challenge in Marion, Iowa. “Confidence goes a long way because you know you’re going to hit it close and you know you’re going to get it up and down. I have nice momentum going into tomorrow and I feel like I’m in good position.”

Regularly operating “below the radar” on the Duramed FUTURES Tour, Cano also held on to a piece of the lead all day, posting three birdies, one bogey and hitting her standard steady 15 greens in regulation. Like Harigae and Prange, she believes Hickory Point has plenty of birdie opportunities.

“You can be aggressive on this golf course,” said Cano, a sixth-year pro and current LPGA Tour member. “Somebody could tear it up and shoot nine under out here.”

Unfortunately for Welch, that was not the case with her scorecard today. The long-hitting Californian had only two birdies and one bogey, but at least she ended the round with a gap wedge to four feet on the 18^th hole and drained it for a birdie.

“I knew a lot of players would catch up to that number I posted yesterday because I didn’t hit anything close today,” said Welch, a 2008 tournament winner and also a member of the 2009 LPGA Tour. “But that birdie on 18 was exactly what I needed after a day like this. I’m only two shots back.”

If fans wanted drama at this year’s 25^th annual event, they got it. Earlier in the day, Yoora Kim of Seoul, South Korea, carded a five-under-par third-round score of 67 to move into a seven-way tie for 12^th at 212 (-4). That group includes Gerina Mendoza (68) of Roswell, N.M., 2007 Decatur tournament runner-up Onnarin Sattayabanphot (72) of Bangkok, Thailand, and first-week rookie Amanda Blumenherst of Scottsdale, Ariz., who rallied today with a bogey-free 4-under-par score of 68 after a disappointing round of 76 on Friday.

“I was really frustrated and upset with myself yesterday,” said Blumenherst, a three-time NCAA Player of the Year from Duke University, making her pro debut this week. “So I came out here today with the mindset of just playing my game and not thinking about yesterday.”

Undoubtedly, though, quite a few players will be thinking about a shootout tomorrow. Or at least, breaking free from the scrum to emerge as Sunday’s champion.

Sunday’s final round of the Michelob ULTRA Duramed FUTURES Players Championship will begin at 7:50 a.m., off the first tee.

For scores and more information, visit duramedfuturestour.com.

Weather: Mostly sunny and humid with temperatures in the low to mid 80s with a slight breeze.

Decatur Event Encourages Recycling During Tournament Week

Tour member Benedikte Grotvedt of Nesbru, Norway is just one player in the tournament field this week who is excited that the event is offering on-course recycling bins, as it has in the past. Recycling is something that is second nature to the Norwegian, whose home country is one of Europe’s leaders for progressive environmental consciousness.

“We recycle everything in Norway and in some towns, you even separate food for compost,” said Grotvedt, who wears Ash City apparel brand golf shirts out of Canada, whose fabric is made out of recycled materials. “Everybody at home is pretty environmentally conscious. It’s now a habit. I try to recycle here as much as I can.”

Grotvedt said the latest movement back home is the use of electric cars, affectionately known as “El Cars.” Owners of these vehicles often can charge their cars for free in some businesses, residences and garages, with the Norwegian government subsidizing the free electric charge. Streets in larger Norwegian cities, such as Oslo, even offer a special lane for “El Cars.” Buses, taxis, motorcycles and electric cars share their own special express lane.

“There’s not a lot of pickup trucks in Norway,” said Grotvedt. “The bigger the car, the more taxes you pay.”

But here in the States, Grotvedt has tried to continue the same environmentally friendly behaviors she has learned at home. And when tournaments on the Duramed FUTURES Tour take steps to do their part, it puts a smile on her face.

“I love seeing the recycling bins here,” she said. “It takes such little effort and it does so much.”

Frantz And Johnson Post A Speedy Round Of Golf On Saturday

They didn’t crack the record for the fastest 18-hole round of golf played in competition on the Duramed FUTURES Tour, but the two-player pairing of Jill Frantz of Iowa City, Iowa, and Malinda Johnson of Eau Claire, Wis., were the first to play this morning at 7:50, and the first to clock in – more than an hour before lunchtime and about one hour exactly before the pairing behind them completed their round. The duo played 18 holes in three hours and 18 minutes.

“We were walking up the third fairway when the group behind us were walking up to their tee shots on No. 2,” said Frantz of the 8 a.m. pairing behind them. “That’s the last time we saw them.”

“We weren’t trying to run out there and we took our time,” added Johnson. “But there were no birdies between the two of us. It would have made my day better to break the record. If I had known we were going for the record, I would have hurried up.”

The two players’ scores didn’t exactly light up the leaderboard. Frantz carded a 76 and Johnson literally limped in with an 80, with blistered feet in wet shoes and socks.

And they didn’t break the Tour’s record time of 3:06, set in Lima, Ohio, in the late ‘90s by an unknown pairing of two. The most recent fastest 18-hole time was set at the 2007 Aurora Health Care Championship in Lake Geneva, Wis., by the twosome of Angela Buzminski of Oshawa, Ontario, and Carolina Llano of Medellin, Colombia, who clocked in for their fleet-of-foot finish in that event of three hours and nine minutes – even with a ruling on the last hole.

“It would have been fun to break the record [for the fastest competitive round played] even if we didn’t have the lowest scores,” said Frantz. “Still, it was nice to be at our own pace with nobody in front of us.”

Contact: Lisa D. Mickey, Duramed FUTURES Tour at (956) 350-6543 and at lisa@duramedfuturestour.com.