Daniel Berger in pole position for Arnold Palmer Invitational victory

The American has three holes left of his third round, but his 13-under score puts him two strokes ahead of Akshay Bhatia. Berger will return on Sunday morning to face a 35-foot eagle putt on the par five 16th.

Further down the leaderboard, Cameron Young is tied with Sepp Straka and the red-hot Collin Morikawa on nine under, four shots adrift. But Young isn't counting himself out.

"Anything can happen," he told AP.

"I don't know what Daniel is going to do, I don't know where I'm going to finish the day. But any time you get a golf course this difficult, and this many good players within a couple shots of each other. Any one of them could take a really difficult golf course and make it look easy."

Elsewhere, Rory McIlroy withdrew from the tournament 30 minutes before his tee time, citing back spasms. It was the first time the Northern Irishman withdrew from a tournament in 13 years.

Finally, world number one Scottie Scheffler likely shot himself out of the tournament with an even par 72 on Saturday.

Scheffler went from a bad start -three over after five - to an electric back nine of five birdies in a six-hole stretch, only for his approach on the last to bounce off the bank and into the water, resulting in a double bogey. He is ten shots behind Berger.