Birdie builds cushion entering final round

Daniel Chopra closed the third round of the Buick Open with a 68.

GRAND BLANC, Mich. (AP) — Daniel Chopra took advantage of an opportunity to build a cushion in the Buick Open.

Chopra birdied the last hole Saturday after Dudley Hart bogeyed it, giving the Swede a two-shot lead with one round left at Warwick Hills

Chopra made a 15-foot putt to close the third round at 4 under and reach 16 under 200. Hart (70), Bubba Watson (68) and Woody Austin (69) were tied for second.

Second-round leader Bo Van Pelt (73) was another shot back along with Kenny Perry (67), the highest-ranked player in a lackluster field that includes just three of the top 30 players in the world.

Chopra was alone atop the leaderboard for the first time at the ninth hole when Hart had his first bogey of the tournament.

Hart pulled back into a tie with Chopra with a birdie at 16, where he got off to a good start with a 308-yard drive in the middle of the fairway. An errant drive set up trouble at 18, though, and he would’ve had to make a 31-foot putt just to stay within a stroke.

Van Pelt closed the front nine at 3 over after going from one sand trap to another to card a double bogey at the ninth hole. He got back into contention with two birdies in a four-hole stretch, pulling within two shots.

Chopra won the season-opening Mercedes-Benz Championship, but has failed to crack the top 30 in any tournament since.

Hart has won twice on the PGA Tour, with the last victory coming in 2000 at the Honda Classic. His highlight this year was in February, when he had a third-place finish at Pebble Beach.

He missed the last seven months of the 2007 season after a softball-sized tumor was discovered in his wife’s lung. She had the tumor and two-thirds of her lung removed last May, but it turned out to be a benign mass. He returned to the tour this year under a family medical exemption and has already made enough money to regain his card.

Chopra was wild off the tee — hitting just three of 14 fairways — but recovered well enough to hit 13 of 18 greens.