Lahiri struggles to 80 in round 3 of Palmer Invitational

India's Anirban Lahiri stumbled to his worse card of the ongoing season, a horrendous eight-over 80 to fall to the bottom of the field at 70th place after the third day of the Arnold Palmer Invitational here.

The hard and firm greens took a toll not just on Lahiri but the entire field it seemed as scoring was very difficult.

Lahiri, starting at one-under for 36 holes, plummeted to seven-over, and will now look at a final round to get some confidence back in his scoring a week ahead of the PLAYERS Championships next week at TPC Sawgrass.

The leader was Matt Fitzpatrick, who led a bunch of Europeans dotting the very top of the leaderboard.

On a course, where avoiding bogeys was a tough job, Fitzpatrick did so very well without any dropped shots. He shot a flawless 5-under 67 and led by a shot over Rory McIlroy (66) going into the final round.

Right behind them was a threesome including England's Matt Wallace (69), the 2018 Hero Indian Open winner, who has risen from 151st to 37th in a matter of just over 11 months.

Lahiri hit nine of the 14 fairways and 10 of the 18 greens, but on the greens he missed a whole lot of putts inside 10 feet and much less, like many others in the field.

Lahiri starting from first was three-over for front nine with bogeys on first and eighth, a double on third and just one birdie on sixth.

The back nine was tougher with a birdie on 13th being the only consolation. He doubled 15th and 17th, which meant he had three doubles, and bogeyed 14th and 18th for a five-over back stretch.