Farmers Insurance Open: Round 3 notebook

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SAN DIEGO -- Ryuji Imada (-13) holds a two stroke lead over Ben Crane and Michael Sim after the third round of the Farmers Insurance Open.

• Imada's only other third-round lead/co-lead was at the 2007 AT&T Classic when he was tied with Troy Matteson going into the final round. He ended up losing to Zach Johnson in a playoff.

• Imada is making his sixth appearance at the Farmers Insurance Open. He has made the cut each time to go with three top-25 finishes, including a second-place finish in 2008.

• Crane is looking for his first top-10 finish since the 2009 Buick Open (T6) in August.

• Crane has posted three top-25 finishes in five career starts at the Farmers Insurance Open. A T7 last year is his best finish at this event.

• Sim is making his first appearance at the Farmers Insurance Open.

• Playing in his 31stTOUR event, 2009 Nationwide Tour Player of the Year Sim is looking for his third top-10 finish. Sim finished T7 at the 2008 Frys.com Open and T9 at the 2007 Ginn sur Mer Classic. Sim played his rookie season on TOUR in 2006.

• Lucas Glover has four made cuts and three missed cuts at the Farmers Insurance Open, his two best finishes being a T3 last year and a T4 in 2006. Glover's last five rounds at the Farmers Insurance Open have been under par.

• After finishing T10 last week at the Bob Hope Classic, Brandt Snedeker is looking for his second top-10 to start the season.

• Snedeker (68) turned in his second career round in the 60s on the South Course in nine career rounds on the South Course during the Farmers Insurance Open. Snedeker had a second round 68 last year.

• Rickie Fowler is making his first start in the Farmers Insurance Open, but his second start at Torrey Pines. Fowler finished T60 at the U.S. Open in 2008 as an amateur.

• Troy Merritt has now shot in the 60s in six of his first 12 rounds on the PGA TOUR. The rookie and winner of the 2009 PGA TOUR Qualifying Tournament finished T20 at the Sony Open in Hawaii, T63 at the Bob Hope Classic and is T11 after the third round of the Farmers Insurance Open.

• Today's scoring average was 72.628. Last year, the third-round scoring average of 74.059 at the Farmers Insurance Open was the highest third-round on TOUR and the sixth-highest scoring average on TOUR for any round:

• The last rookie to win on TOUR was Marc Turnesa at the 2008 Justin Timberlake Shriners Hospitals for Children Open. A rookie did not win last year for the first time since the 1998 season. Since 1970, there have been six seasons where a rookie did not win (2009, 1998, 1986, 1981, 1978 and 1970). Rookies Fowler and Matt Every are both T5 and four strokes off the lead.

• The best 54 hole score in tournament history is 198 by Woody Blackburn (1985) and Tiger Woods (2008).

• Three international players are among the top 5 heading in the final round (Imada, Sim and Choi). Jose Maria Olazabal won the Farmers Insurance Open by a stroke in 2002, becoming the first international player to win the event since Gary Player's victory in 1963.

• The Farmers Insurance Open has not produced a first-time winner since Jay Don Blake won in 1991.

• In 2009, the third-round leader/co-leader won 23 of 44 times on TOUR.

• Defending champion Nick Watney shot a 69 today and is T17.

• In the 54 years that this tournament has gone the full 72 holes, the third-round leader/co-leader has gone on to win 26 times, including most recently by Tiger Woods in 2008.

• Brendon de Jonge (T17) recorded the only bogey-free round of the day. Last year, there were no bogey-free rounds on the South Course during the third or fourth rounds. Prior to that the last bogey-free round at the Farmers Insurance Open in the third or fourth round came in 2008 when Tiger Woods and Stewart Cink both turned in bogey-free third rounds.