STRANGE things can happen on the final day of a major but for the second year in succession the Open championship looks like being settled by a matchplay-style shoot-out between the leading two players. Whether Jordan Spieth and Matt Kuchar can provide a duel as beguiling as the one served up at Royal Troon last year by Henrik Stenson and Phil Mickelson will remain to be seen, but with three rounds now played it will take an almighty effort from those in the chasing pack for the Claret Jug not to end up in the hands of one of these two Americans.

Rory McIlroy’s anticipated charge up the leaderboard did not materialise. The Northern Irishman began his third round promisingly with a birdie on the first hole, then picked up further shots on the fourth and fifth. By that point the heaving army of fans following him around the course had begun to work themselves up into a lather.

McIlroy’s momentum, though, would soon run out, with a raft of dropped shots littering his card including a double-bogey six on the tenth. Overhauling a nine-stroke deficit today will prove a mammoth ask even of a man of his talents, making it hardly a surprise that McIlroy was performing the verbal equivalent of a rain dance as he summed up his chances.

“I need to pick myself up, play a good round tomorrow and hope for some bad weather,” he admitted. “Hope for some guys to struggle and we’ll see what happens. I just have to play a good round of golf and see where that takes me, I guess, try to limit the mistakes, and get off to a fast start again like I’ve done the last couple of days.

“But I definitely feel like today was an opportunity lost to get right in the mix. I’ve always been good when I get off to fast starts being able to keep it going, and I didn’t today.”

Brooks Koepka, the US Open champion, finds himself in a better position to challenge for a second consecutive major but is still three shots behind Kuchar and a further three ahint of Spieth in first place. But he does not intend to be reckless in his pursuit of the leading pair.

“You’ve got to be aggressive anyway, if you want to win,” he reasoned. “But it’s conservatively aggressive, I guess you could say is the best way to put that. I can’t make mistakes with bogeys tomorrow if I want to catch them.”

He is joined on five-under par by Austin Connelly, the 20 year-old Canadian-American making his Open debut, who shot a 66 to give himself an outside chance. “I like playing links golf,” he said. “And I’m just very confident with where my game is at right now. I’ve been trending in the right direction for a while. And I think this place really fits my game well.

“I had two goals at the start of the week: one was to make the cut and the other was to rise up the leaderboard at the weekend. So that’s still my goal.”

English hopes for a first Open win in 25 years have all but fizzled out. Ross Fisher gave some optimism with a 66 that carried him to two-under par but is surely too far off the pace, while Ian Poulter – who began the day in third – went backwards with a 71. “Shit happens,” he surmised concisely.