US Tour/The Players' Championship: It's not often you can feel sympathy for a bunch of millionaires attempting to make their wallets bulge even more. Yesterday, though, was one of those days.

The weather-plagued Players Championship at the TPC at Sawgrass, bedevilled by thunderstorms for the first four days, finally righted itself despite a new weather menace, that of 40mph winds.

Money, it seems, can't buy you everything. Despite a purse of $8 million, the richest in golf, and a top prize of $1.4 million, the weather gods wreaked havoc on the world's elite golfers. After the storms that frustrated and dragged out the tournament into overtime, came the wind.

"It was brutal out there," remarked world number one Vijay Singh.

And when the wind blows so hard in these parts, it's a recipe for disaster. Ask poor Bob Tway. As he walked to the 17th tee, he did so as a title contender. By the time he walked to the 18th, his hopes had literally been blown away. Tway hit four balls into the water around this island green on the way to running up a 12 on the par three, the highest score ever recorded on the hole. In the space of 15 minutes, he'd dropped from 10th to 72nd.

His score beat by one the tournament record for the hole, set by Robert Gamez in 1990, and equalled the 12 by the little-known Phillip Hancock at the 384-yard fourth in 1985.

Even without the wind Tway had taken a bogey four on the 17th in the first round and put two balls in the drink for a triple bogey in the second, making him 13 over par for the hole and 11 under for the other 17.

It will come as no comfort to him that he was still a long way from the highest score the the 17th has seen.

In 1985, Angelo Spagnolo, a 31-year-old grocery store manager, played there in the "America's Worst Golfer" contest.

He put 27 balls in the water before being told by officials to putt round the lake and over the narrow path to the green.

Yesterday Tway's plight was the worst of many horror tales on a day when the third round was finally completed. Other tales of woe? Lee Westwood, the epitome of consistency for much of his round, was eight-over-par for his final five holes to dramatically fall away, while Phil Mickelson, like Westwood, also recorded a quadruple bogey seven on the 17th.

An indication of how tough the 17th hole played in the third round was that 20 players put 26 balls into the water, compared to seven in the first round and nine in the second.

The Irish players weren't immune from cruel fate on the 17th either. Having failed to find the water on this hole in 17 previous visits up to Sunday's second round, Padraig Harrington again saw his tee-shot plunge into a watery grave; and his tee-shot on the 18th also dived into the lake.

"It was a tough day," he said, "but I actually played great. I hit the ball fantastic . . . (but) I just kept making the wrong decisions. I hit two fantastic shots on the 17th and 18th, I just overplayed them. I was holding the wind.

"I won't tell you a word of a lie, I didn't hit one bad shot in the last five holes (of his third round) and I covered them in six-over-par. I'm not saying the conditions were crazy, it was just that I was doing, crazy, stupid things. I just picked the wrong shots (to play).

"I can't hit it any better, I was just making wrong decisions. I would assume going from the high of last week to the low of it meant that I am just not with it," said Harrington, referring to winning the Honda Classic only to return home to discover his father had been diagnosed with a recurrence of cancer.

Despite the dragged-out nature of the tournament, Harrington has stuck with his original plan to bypass the BellSouth Classic in Atlanta and return home to Dublin to spend a few days with his father before returning to the US on Sunday for next week's Masters in Augusta.

Graeme McDowell's third round 74 also pushed him out of contention, the down point coming with a double bogey seven on the 18th where he played a poor lay-up and was left with a bad lie in a fairway bunker. "It was sloppy," he said.

However, the northerner kept his composure despite having a first-hand view of Tway's troubles on the 17th. With a considerable back-up of groups on that hole, McDowell watched as Tway hit ball after ball into the lake. "It was hard to watch all that," admitted McDowell, who nevertheless parred the hole.

While the Irish were far removed from the business end of the leaderboard, a logjam was developing during the final round. Luke Donald, the 54-hole leader on 11-under, experienced a double-bogey on the fifth on the way to eventually turning in 40 and slipping behind new pacesetter Joe Durant, seeking to win for the first time in five years.

In a final round move, Fred Funk, a local resident, birdied the 12th to join Durant on 10-under, a shot clear of Donald and Scott Verplank with Tim Herron just a shot further adrift after 10 holes of his final round.