Sam Burns will start the final round of The Open Championship at Royal Birkdale with a two-shot lead, after a third-round 65 took the American to 10 under par for the tournament.

Burns is on 200 for 54 holes at the Southport links, ESPN reported. Ryan Fox of New Zealand and Si Woo Kim of South Korea share second place at 8 under.

Three 62s in one week

The defining statistic of the week is not the lead but the scoring. Fox shot 62 on Saturday, matching the lowest round ever recorded at a men's major championship. It was the third 62 of this Open alone: Burns and Australia's Lucas Herbert had both shot the number in Friday's second round.

A links course in benign conditions can yield scores like these, and Royal Birkdale has offered little of the wind that usually defends it. What makes Fox's round notable is that it came a day after two players had already reached the mark, in a tournament where the figure had previously been reached only a handful of times in more than a century and a half of major golf.

Burns's own route to the lead has been uneven rather than serene. He opened with a 73, well off the pace, before the 62 on Friday moved him into contention and Saturday's 65 gave him the outright lead.

The chasing group

Behind Fox and Kim, Ryan Gerard and Herbert are on 7 under. Ludvig Åberg, Bryson DeChambeau and Jackson Suber are a shot further back at 6 under.

Tommy Fleetwood, who grew up nearby and has finished runner-up at this championship before, is on 5 under. Scottie Scheffler, Jon Rahm and Xander Schauffele are on 4 under, with Schauffele's third-round 66 the best of that group. Rory McIlroy is 2 under.

That leaves roughly a dozen players within six shots with 18 holes to play, a margin that a links course can erase quickly if the weather turns.

The final round

Two shots is a real advantage but not a decisive one, and Burns has not previously won a major championship. Herbert, who will play in one of the closing groups, expected the leader to be difficult to catch. "I think Sam Burns is going to be a man possessed," he said, adding that he was "not thrilled about giving him a three-shot head start" over his own position.

Burns was asked about the effect of recent events in his personal life on his form and deflected the question. "If I was aware of that, I'd have like eight kids by now," he said.

The variable neither he nor the field controls is the weather. Royal Birkdale has been scoreable all week; if that holds, the winner will likely need to keep making birdies. If the wind returns to the Lancashire coast, a two-shot lead and the patience to protect it become considerably more valuable.