SOUTHPORT, England—By his own math, Sergio Garcia has no shot at winning the Open Championship Sunday. In Saturday's third round the Spaniard shot a four-over-par 74 to finish at nine over for the tournament, seven shots back of overnight leader Greg Norman.

But for Garcia, that wasn't good enough.

"I felt like I needed no more than two over to have a chance," he said. "I could have done that, but things didn't happen. I'm disappointed. I fought really hard and didn't get anything out of it."

Garcia said the high winds that battered Royal Birkdale on Saturday made scoring almost impossible. "Any day you're hitting a 5-iron from 130 yards when you usually hit it 200 yards, you know it's a tough day. So many putts were hit with the ball wobbling," he said. "[The R&A] was close to calling it off for a while."

Tied for 15th with 18 holes to go, Garcia will have to overcome some formidable competition to make an unlikely run at the championship he lost in a playoff last year. In addition to Norman, he'll have to leapfrog the defending champion, Padraig Harrington, and K.J. Choi, among others.

(Photo: Peter Morrison/AP)