This is how play continued throughout the day, but as the afternoon wore on, one or two subtle but perhaps important trends began to make themselves apparent.

Bernhard Langer's play belied his years. A quiet smile from the man who will start in tomorrow's final grouping.

Up ahead of the front runners, having started on four-under, a wily old fox called Bernhard Langer began to make a move. He had dropped a shot on the first, seemingly taking himself out of contention, but now he picked up four strokes in only three holes. He birdied 6, then eagled the par-4 seventh when he holed his approach, and followed that with a birdie on the difficult par-3 eighth, moving to seven-under and only a couple of strokes off the leaders.

His shots on 6 and 7 were extraordinary – in fairway bunkers from the tee on both holes, he played both with a 7-iron and knocked the first to two feet, and the second one into the hole.

Bernhard was gallant enough to acknowledge his good fortune in his press interview afterwards: "Maybe I'll just aim for the fairway bunkers off the tee tomorrow," he quipped. "I might get round in 50…"

He swapped birdie and bogey on 10 and 12, but then another run of four birdies in four holes from 13 through 16 gave him an extraordinary final total of 63 for eleven-under, and the clubhouse lead.

Last week's winner in Singapore, Jeev Milkha Singh, Ireland's Rory McIlroy, and Francesco Molinari had all been in contention at the start of the day, and now they were right back in the center of the action with finishes of ten-under. Spain's Pablo Arrazabal had seemed to be on the fringes at –4, but he recorded a 64 to join them. Lin wen-tang continued to make progress, and a birdie at the last made him the new clubhouse leader on twelve-under. Colin Montogmerie kept just in touch on nine-under.

Two of today's winners: Lin wen-tang and Jeev Milkha Singh both had something to smile about.

In the meantime, many of the morning's leaders were taking themselves out of contention. Plaphol, Louis Oosthuizen, and Oliver Fisher had started the day joint-leaders, but they were all dropping strokes and none finished better than five-off the lead – Oosthuizen, in particular, suffering a nightmare on the last green with three putts from ten feet to lose touch completely, while Plaphol needed two from even closer.