Bay Hill Invitational:Sean O'Hair will play the final round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational with Tiger Woods for the second year in a row at Bay Hill but this time he has a five-shot lead over the world number one. Woods won his fifth title at Bay Hill in 2008 having started the final round in a five-way tie for the lead, if he wins his sixth in just his third tournament back after knee surgery, it will be nothing short of sensational.

Woods will have to make up considerable ground on a difficult course that has bared its teeth all week and promises to get tougher if the rain begins to fall as forecast.

Yet O’Hair, who will start the day at seven under par following a third-round 71, said he was trying not to think about his five-stroke cushion or the best player in the world.

“Obviously a five-shot lead is great,” O’Hair said, “but I’m not going to focus on my lead, I’m not going to focus on the fact that I’m leading a golf tournament.

“The fact of the matter is there’s one more round of golf in this event, and I’m going to focus on it like I would Thursday.

“I’m going to come in and do my routines, and I’m not going to play anybody else, I’m just going to play the golf course, and like I said, play shot to shot and add them up at the end.”

The par-70, 7,239-yard course was a challenge yesterday as gusting winds hampered good scores in central Florida and overnight leader O’Hair was one of only five players to end the round under par for the tournament on a day when only four players among the remaining 74 managed to break 70.

Woods looms at two under having also shot a 71, putting him in the final group on the last day of a tournament for the first time since returning to the PGA Tour last month, although he is expecting another grind.

“We’ll see what happens,” Woods said. “It may soften up, the wind may blow, it’s supposed to be a little bit cooler.

“We’ll see what happens when we get out here, what kind of conditions we’re going to have, whether we’re able to shoot low scores or not or we’re going to have to play like we have been the last three days.”

Woods had run into trouble at the par-four 16th where he found the right greenside rough with his second shot and discovered a spectator had picked up his ball and then dropped it to the ground.

He punched the ball out to the edge of water on the other side of the green and saw his chip hold up 10 feet from the hole before taking a five.

There was further woe at the 18th when his second shot out of primary rough plugged in a grass bank short of the green between the fairway and a narrow strip of lakeside beach.

A fruitless five-minute search took the world number one back to a drop zone in the fairway 148 yards out and Woods sent his fourth shot to the green 25 feet from the hole.

Woods, though, holed his putt to escape with a bogey that was celebrated with a trademark fist pump.

“I thought I played well all day,” he said. “Unfortunately I finished up at over par for the day, but I played better than that.”

With tournament organisers returning to three-player groups for the final round and off split tees in anticipation of rain and thunderstorms on Sunday, Woods and O’Hair will be joined by former Masters champion Zach Johnson, whose two-under 68 moved him to one under for the week.

First-round leader Jason Gore will also start on Sunday at one under alongside Japan’s Ryuji Imada, having finished his third round with a bogey and double bogey on his way to a 74. Imada fired a 73.

Brandt Snedeker fired the low round of the day, a 67, to reach level par in a four-way tie for sixth place with fellow Americans Pat Perez and Scott Verplank and Australia’s Robert Allenby.

Ireland’s Padraig Harrington and Sweden’s Daniel Chopra are part of seven-man group at one over par in a tie for 10th place.