The 33-year-old Australian was tied with Perry to start the third round, and as usual, he got out of the blocks quickly with a 35-foot birdie on the opening hole and a wedge that steadied itself in the wind and landed 5 feet away on No. 3.

Perry got within one shot before he started missing greens and missing par putts, and Goggin kept at least a two-shot margin throughout the back nine, even as cheers were all around him.

“You can’t press out here,” he said. “You’ve got to let the birdies come to you.”

His best plays might have been for par. Goggin got up-and-down from the back bunker on the par-3 12th, then faced a tough shot from a deep bunker right of the 17th green. His shot was running quickly until it struck the pin, rattled around to the other side and settled 2 feet away to keep his distance.

Weir, lost amid the Phil Mickelson-Sergio Garcia grouping the first two days, has steadily crept up the leaderboard and stayed out of trouble most of the day. He picked up a birdie on the par-5 fifth, and thought he was in trouble on the sixth when his tee shot caught a gust, leaving him 215 to a shallow green over the pond.

“I knifed a 3-iron in there about 8 feet,” Weir said. “That’s when I knew that things were going pretty good. I was hitting solid shots, and outside of that, I didn’t have much trouble.”

Weir didn’t read too much into Goggin’s inexperience with the lead.

Two years ago, he was tied with Arron Oberholser going into the final round of the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, caught a few bad breaks with mud early in the round and staggered home to a 78 as Oberholser collected his first tour victory.

“You know what? You have to win some time,” Weir said. “And sometimes a guy, when he hasn’t won, is hungry and wants to do it. Inexperience or not, Mat’s been around a long time and he’s a good player.”

Nick O’Hern (72) was at 4-under 212, while former U.S. Open champion Geoff Ogilvy was in the group at 213, five shots behind. That might seem like a lot, but it’s the margin K.J. Choi made up a year ago.

Mickelson, meanwhile, never recovered from a double bogey on the 17th hole and shot 70, leaving him nine shots back.

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