Valspar Championship Round 3: Fitzpatrick's Moving Day Is Exactly That — He's Moving, and Im Knows It
There's a look that the best players in the world get when they're locked in during a tournament round and they know it — a kind of practiced calm that reads, from the outside, as either extreme confidence or extreme detachment, depending on how well you know the person. Matt Fitzpatrick had that look all day Saturday at Innisbrook. His 66 wasn't spectacular in any individual moment. There was no eagle, no back-nine explosion, no single hole that will define the highlight package. It was just 66 holes of Copperhead played exactly the way Copperhead is supposed to be played, and now he's one shot behind Sungjae Im entering Sunday.
That's the story of moving day at the 2026 Valspar Championship: Fitzpatrick moved, Im wobbled but didn't fall, and the leaderboard entering Sunday is exactly what the tournament needed it to be.
Im Blinked, But Didn't Break
Sungjae Im leads at 13-under after a third-round 70 that required genuine steadiness to produce. He made two bogeys in the middle stretch of the round — both on holes where the course invited the kind of tentative iron play that gets punished on Copperhead's crowned greens — and could easily have shed more shots before reeling off three birdies on the back nine to stabilize at one ahead of Fitzpatrick. The closing 34 was Im at his best: disciplined, patient, converting the makeable putts he'd been leaving short earlier in the round.
That he is leading by one rather than trailing by two is a tribute to his mental steadiness. Lesser players lose two shots on Copperhead and lose three more trying to get them back. Im absorbed the wobble and came out the other side still in command of his tournament.
Davis Thompson's Sunday Invitation
Davis Thompson sits at 11-under in third after a third-round 67 that was as clean as any round played this week. Thompson is two shots back of Im and one behind Fitzpatrick, which puts him in the conversation without quite owning it. He has the game for Copperhead — his iron play is elite and his ability to miss in the right spots keeps the scrambling manageable — and a Sunday 65 gets him to the winning number if the leaders do anything human.
Jordan Spieth is at 8-under and effectively out of it unless something extraordinary happens in the final round, which is the exact same thing that has been true of Spieth every Saturday this season. He continues to play the back nine beautifully and the front nine like a science experiment gone wrong. One of these weeks, that pattern has to reverse. It has not reversed at the Valspar Championship.
The Sunday Setup You Actually Want
What makes the Valspar Championship's Sunday compelling beyond just the leaderboard is the narrative collision it represents. Fitzpatrick is a player fresh off the most painful near-miss of his season — last Sunday at TPC Sawgrass, where he led entering the back nine and watched Cameron Young birdie 17 while he bogeyed it. That kind of loss sharpens certain players. The evidence from Thursday and Saturday suggests it has sharpened Fitzpatrick considerably.
Im, meanwhile, is a player who has shown the ability to close tournaments before. He's won on Tour. He knows what it feels like to lead entering the final round of a PGA Tour event and manage the pressure that comes with it. Whether his game Sunday can match what Fitzpatrick is about to bring is the only question that matters.
Copperhead on Sunday. One shot. Two of the best ball-strikers in the field. This is the Valspar Championship delivering exactly what it promised.