Snedeker shares lead going into final round

After taking off five weeks to nurse a rib injury, Brandt Snedeker said he realized there would be some cobwebs to shake off.

Missing back-to-back cuts leading up to the Masters Tournament after starting the season as the PGA Tour’s hottest player made that clear enough.

“I’m not Tiger Woods. I’m not a Rory McIlroy,” Sne­de­ker said. “I’m not a guy who’s going to make a hundred cuts in a row or be an overpowering player. I’m going to be a guy who has some ups and downs, and I realize that, so I try to minimize the downs and maximize the ups is all I can do.”

On Saturday, he proved being Brandt Snedeker was better this week, starting with 12 pars and making birdie on Nos. 13, 15 and 16 for 3-under 69 and a share of the lead at 7-under.

Snedeker strained an intercostal muscle in early Feb­ruary, and though he said he could have returned earlier, he sat out until he was fully healed in order to avoid aggravating it or delaying his recovery. It was an unnatural break to a season that featured back-to-back runner-up finishes followed by a victory at Pebble Beach.

“The first part of the season I was healthy, playing great, nothing was wrong,” he said. “Then I got hurt, and I had to start pretty much from scratch.”

The patience paid off as Sne­deker, 32, said he was “mentally fresh and physically fresh.”

“I feel not quite back to where I was, but I feel very close to where I was,” he said. “The confidence is coming back. The biggest key for me is when I think properly around the golf course, when I manage my game in the right way, miss it in the right spots. That’s when I play the best, and I’ve done a great job so far this week doing that.”

Snedeker spent the week before the Masters preparing on Sea Island, Ga.

“The biggest thing for me was getting to where I could turn the ball over consistently and having my miss be right,” said Snedeker, who shot 70s in the first two rounds and went bogey-free Saturday. “If you miss the ball right here, you’ve got a chance. If you miss the ball left here, you don’t, as a general rule.

“I got my golf swing to where I felt like I had a one-way miss going, which was nice, and obviously my preparation depends on putting. If you don’t putt well here, you’re not going to play well, so I spent this past week putting, just making sure I felt comfortable with the greens, and hopefully, it’s paid off so far.”