Jason Day is one solid round away from climbing to the No. 1 world ranking for the first time.
The kid from rural Queensland who told people in golf a decade ago that he wanted to take Tiger Woods' mantle and be the best player in the world leads the BMW Championship by an almost impregnable six shots through three rounds.
Although he was well below his early-tournament clip today, the Australian carded a two-under par 69, finishing with a five-metre birdie putt at the 18th to reach 20-under par.
Day only hit seven fairways for the day and had four bogeys to go with six birdies, but it was always going to be hard for him to back up from opening rounds of 61-63.
Americans Scott Piercy and Daniel Berger at 14-under are his closest challengers, while world No.1 Rory McIlroy is a further shot back.
Day came into the tournament at No. 3 in the world behind McIlroy and Jordan Spieth. He is poised to go into the final round of the tour playoffs, the Tour Championship in Atlanta next week, in the No. 1 rank on the Fedex Cup points list, giving him a chance to become the first Australian to win the $US10 million cash bonus.
Even more importantly, he can become just the third Australian man to scale to the top of the world rankings, behind Greg Norman, who held the honor for 331 weeks over an 11-year stretch between 1986 and 1997, and Adam Scott, who was No. 1 for 11 weeks last year.
Of the other Australians, Matt Jones is tied-41st and Steven Bowditch tied-48th, both on the cusp of the top 30 who will go to Atlanta next week.