SUNRIVER, Ore. – First he had an eagle, then a double bogey. The third round of The Tradition was quite an adventure for David Edwards.

Edwards stumbled on the par-3 17th hole, and wound up with a share of the lead with one round left in the fourth major on the Champions Tour.

“The wind was kind of calm on the tee and I almost thought I had too much club, then the wind started blowing so I hit a 4-iron,” he said. “I thought I hit it pretty good but it hooked more that I thought it would.”

Edwards and Mark McNulty were two stroke ahead of D.A. Weibring at Crosswater Golf Club. Tom Watson and Tom Kite were three strokes back of the leaders.

Edwards finished with an even-par 72 for a 12-under 204 total.

“You’ve got to block those things out and not play too much of an emotional roller coaster,” he said.

McNulty had trouble, too. He bogeyed the par-4 18th for a third-round 70.

“I certainly played well for the first 10 holes and then a few things went wrong,” McNulty said. “I had a couple of loose tee shots and lost a little bit of confidence, to be brutally honest.”

Weibring, who won the tour’s last event, the 3M Championship in Blaine, Minn., shot a 68 to reach 10 under. He wasn’t sizing up the competition going into the final round.

“I think it’s up to me to play a good round,” he said.

Keith Fergus, who won the Ginn Championship earlier this season, appeared to finish at 10 under along with Weibring. But a rules official penalized Fergus two shots for testing the conditions of a bunker on the 17th hole by shuffling his feat.

Fergus wound up 8 under after three rounds with a 72.

Edwards, who joined the Champions Tour last year and has three top-10 finishes this season, eagled the par-5 12th, hitting his third shot 146 yards into the hole. It put him atop the leaderboard.

Watson, who had a setback Friday when he hit Ben Crenshaw’s ball by accident and was given a two-stroke penalty, shot a 67 Saturday to reach 9 under.

He said he wasn’t wondering about the difference those two shots could have made going into the final round.

“It’s gone,” he said. “The “What ifs?’ they do no good. The only positive thing is I checked my ball 14 times today.”

With Watson at 9 under was Kite, who shot a 68.

Last year, Argentina’s Eduardo Romero came from five shots back on the final day to beat Lonnie Nielsen with a birdie on the first playoff hole at the Reserve Vineyards & Golf Club in Aloha, west of Portland.

The Tradition started at Desert Mountain in Scottsdale, Ariz., before it was moved to Superstition Mountain. With the help of Oregon native Peter Jacobsen, the event moved again in 2003 to the Reserve Vineyards & Golf Club outside of Portland.

This season, it came to Crosswater in central Oregon’s high desert. Canoers on the Little Deschutes River, which cuts through the course, got to take in a little golf along with the scenery.

Money leader Jay Haas shot a 73 for a 3-under 213 going into the final round. Haas has finished in the top 10 in the season’s first three majors. Watson won the British Open, Brad Bryant took the U.S. Senior Open and Denis Watson won the Senior PGA Championship.

The Tradition is sponsored by Jeld-Wen, an Oregon-based window and door manufacturer.

AP-ES-08-18-07 1943EDT