Lanto Griffin thought he’d be sipping bourbon on Saturday, instead he’s making a run at the Shriners

LAS VEGAS – Lanto Griffin thought his week was over after turning in a 1-over-par 72 in Thursday’s first round of the Shriners Children’s Open.

“I felt like I played great and shooting 1 over out here is like, you’re done, like there’s no way to come back from that,” he said.

A 64 in the second round improved his mood but he still thought he would be heading home after 36 holes, telling his girlfriend he had like a 0.5 percent chance of making the cut because of defenseless, wind-free TPC Summerlin.

“I was actually in a really good mood (Friday). I had a flight booked for today and I had a lay-flat seat to Miami,” he said. “I was going to watch football and have a couple bourbons on the flight home.”

But the wind changed Friday to give the course some teeth, and instead of flying to Miami, he made the cut and soared up the leaderboard with another 64 in Saturday’s third round. In less than 48 hours, Griffin went from thinking he was done to thinking about winning his second PGA Tour title.

With rounds of 72-64-64, he’s at 13 under, placing him one shot out of the lead held by Sungjae Im and Chad Ramey, who had yet to tee off.

“We were walking off and my caddie was like it could have been 59 today pretty easy,” Griffin said. “Obviously I’m very happy with 64. I haven’t had an easy round in a long time, so it’s kind of nice to shoot a low number and not have to stress too much.

“Just haven’t had any momentum in a while.”

Griffin, 33, who won the 2019 Houston Open, hasn’t had a top 10 since he tied for seventh in the Farmers Insurance Open last January. Since then, he’s missed seven cuts in 20 starts and has been looking at everything to turn things around.

“I’ve been working too much,” he said. “It’s been like new flavor of the week for the last year, different swing every week and sometimes every day. So we’ve been working the last couple weeks on just consistency and working on the same things.

“So today it was one of the things where things are going your way you don’t even have to push the ticket as much because you feel like you don’t need to as much, so you just make better decisions and it just kind of snowballs.”