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PITTSBURGH -- Fred Couples watched Kenny Perry relentlessly sprint up the leaderboard Saturday in the Senior Players Championship and figured it was time for his putter to start co-operating. Three birdies over the final five holes restored some order as Couples took a step closer to his first victory of the season. The Hall of Famer finished with a 3-under 67 and was at 15-under 195 at rain-soaked and toothless Fox Chapel, two strokes clear of the hard-charging Perry. Couples already has three runner-up finishes this season. He has no plans to make it four. "If I go out and play well, I have a great shot at winning," Couples said. "Im certainly not going to be thinking about second place." It appeared thats all the rest of the field was playing for after Couples ripped off seven birdies in 11 holes of the second round Friday before a midafternoon downpour halted play for the day. The deluge cooled off Couples a bit. He two-putted from 60 feet on the par-3 third when he returned to the course Saturday morning, then made five straight pars before finishing his round off with a birdie on the par-4 ninth for an 8-under 62. Tying the record for the lowest score ever in a major on the Champions Tour should have provided Couples with some breathing room. Instead, Perry made it close. Perry began the day as speck in Couples rearview mirror before the Kentucky player made three birdies and an eagle over the final six holes of the second round for a 7-under 63. He backed it up six hours later with another flawless 63, using his length off the tee and a new putter to chase down the frontrunning Couples. After a lethargic 71 in the first round left him frustrated, Perry switched putters to one with more loft hoping it would help keep the ball online on the soggy and cleat-marked greens. The decision paid off handsomely as Perry set a tournament record for the lowest score in consecutive rounds. The combined 14-under 126 Perry posted in the second and third rounds is two better than the 128 Jack Nicklaus shot in 1990 when the tournament was held in Dearborn, Mich. Perry joked he was inspired by the Pittsburgh Pirates. He watched from the second row on Friday night as Pittsburgh crushed the Milwaukee Brewers 10-3 to move to 49-30 on the season, the best record in baseball. "It was pretty awesome," Perry said. So were most of the scores at the rolling course about 10 miles up the Allegheny River from PNC Park. The rain during the week forced officials to allow players to lift, clean and place their golf balls in the fairways. The quick, treacherous test the players endured during their last visit to Fox Chapel a year ago instead looked like a pitch and putt for longer players like Perry and Couples. "We played ball-in-hand for three days," Perry said. "You know, you just see the scores go way down when you let the guys get ball in hand." Duffy Waldorf birdied his final two holes for a 66 to remain in striking distance at 11 under. First-round leader John Huston briefly tied Couples for the lead but faltered on the back nine, bogeying the last two holes to shoot 68 and finish five shots back of Couples. Mike Goodes had a 65 to match Huston at 10 under. Perry didnt falter, briefly creating a three-way logjam with Couples and Huston when Perry birdied the 12th and Couples three-putted the 10th green for bogey. The missed opportunity seemed to wake Couples up. Frustrated he wasnt taking advantage of the soft conditions that led to Perrys assault on the par-70 layout, Couples birdied Nos. 14 and 15, then capped his round with a splendid pitch from in front of the left bunker on the par-5 18th, allowing him to roll in a birdie. Not bad for a guy who insists he was "outplayed" by Huston for most of the day by Huston before the final five holes. Now Couples heads into Sunday searching for his third major title since joining the Champions Tour in 2010. He won the Senior Players in 2011 at Westchester Country Club in New York and the Senior British Open last year. He was in position to capture the Regions Tradition earlier this month but fell one shot short in a showdown with points leader David Frost. This time it appears the duel will be with Perry, who is pain-free after dealing with knee problems earlier in the season. Perry, who has undergone surgery on both knees during his career and takes medicine to deal with arthritis in the joints, called his recovery over the last two weeks "a miracle." He took a cortisone shot in his left knee recently and has had fluid drained out of the joint, freeing him up to walk the course with relative ease. "If you have had a need this long stuck in your knee with a big syringe sucking all that junk out of you, thats not very pleasant," Perry said. "But once they do it, immediately it gives you relief. The pressures off and you can actually bend your knee, you can actually walk." Perry will walk alongside Couples on Sunday as Perry looks for the first major title of his 31-year professional career. "Youre going to see still a lot of good scores tomorrow," Perry said. "So the guys that are near the lead, at the lead are going to have to play a good round of golf. Somebodys going to have to shoot a good round tomorrow." Adidas Nmd Outlet . No. 13-seeded John Isner and No. 21 Philipp Kohlschreiber were among six players who dropped out of the tournament on Tuesday, joining No. 12 seed Tommy Haas and two other players who withdrew on Monday. Cheap Nike Vapormax China .J. -- Marty Brodeur beat the Pittsburgh Penguins yet again. http://www.outletsneakersclearance.com/fake-air-max-270.html . Mats Zuccarello and Derek Stepan scored shootout goals, and backup goalie Cam Talbot earned his second win in two nights as the Rangers shook off a late tying tally and beat the Maple Leafs 2-1 Monday night. Air Max 270 Outlet Cheap . Three came down to the fourth quarter while quarterbacks continued to shine in all four games; so important to the overall quality of the game. Cheap Vapormax China . Team physician Dr. Steve Traina performed the surgery Friday. Robinson was injured in a spill underneath the Nuggets basket during the first quarter of Wednesday nights loss to the Charlotte Bobcats. Peter Moores may not have wanted to look at the data later but his apocryphal utterance after Englands shambolic exit from the 2015 World Cup has, in the finest cricket tradition, taken on a life of its own. Like Steve Waughs Youve just dropped the World Cup, mate or Brian Johnstons The bowlers Holding, the batsmans Willey, Moores supposedly needing a numerical breakdown of how England dropped their bundle against Bangladesh looks set to enter the canon.It has been debunked before, and the authors of 28 Days Data, a dissection of Englands failings at the last six World Cups, readily explain the crackly radio line that led to Moores being misquoted by the BBC in their prologue to the book. A prologue entitled Well have to look at the data. In a book named after the length of Englands disastrous campaign (28 days) and, yes, the D-A-T-A. Moores seems a very forgiving man but he is not going to hear the end of this one.He is just one of many former England players and coaches that Peter Miller and Dave Tickner (who you might know better as @TheCricketGeek and @tickerscricket) spoke to in putting together 28 Days Data, which features another infamously iconic moment from Englands white-ball history on the cover: Nasser Hussain raising three fingers at the Lords media centre. The book title is based on a film about a rage-inducing virus that turns people into zombies; no further explanation needed.But what caused the contagion? What turned England from the bright-eyed World Cup finalists of 1992 to the dead-men-stumbling who were knocked out in the first group stage when the tournament returned to Australia and New Zealand 23 years later? The most recent edition was so bad that Miller and Tickner liken it to a Greatest Hits compilation, and there is definitely a lost consonant there somewhere.There is quite a back catalogue to get through and the formula chosen is straightforward: visit each debacle in turn and talk to those involved. The initial fall was swift. Four years on from a strong side, led by Graham Gooch, being beaten by Imran Khans cornered tigers, England belatedly discovered the world was playing a different game - literally, in some cases, with Englands home ODIs still taking place in daylight with white clothes, a red ball and different fielding restrictions to those in other parts of the world.Preparation was also an issue (and was to become a theme). The 1996 World Cup was played in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka - so naturally England had not been to the subcontinent for three years previously. While Sri Lanka, the eventual winners, were tearing up the place with Sanath Jayasuriya and Romesh Kaluwitharana at the top of the order, Englands nod to innovation was to open (in three of their six games) with Neil Smith, the Warwickshire offspinner and occasional pinch-hitter best remembered for a cheeky on-pitch vomit, who had played a grand total of two ODIs going into the tournament.ddddddddddddThis was all before you bring the coach, Raymond Illingworth, and his eccentricities into the equation. I think we probably made the most of what we had, begins Illingworth in a rambling, reflective quote, during which he says he had played a lot more one-day cricket than the captain, Michael Atherton, criticises Athertons field placings and the bowlers bowling short and then concludes: We could have made better use of what we had.England making poor use of what little they had was the recurring problem, and most supporters will be familiar with the zesty collection of cock-ups that follows. The experiment with Adam Hollioake as a specialist one-day captain (appointed after five games, led England to victory in Sharjah, reign over inside a year) provided a brief glimpse of how things might have been, before the ECB went back to picking Test-shaped players to fill ODI-shaped holes - notably replacing Nick Knight with Hussain as opener (a role he had never performed before) on the eve of the 1999 World Cup. England, the hosts, were of course eliminated before the official World Cup song was even released (a song, incidentally, that Dave Stewart quietly repurposed for the Jackie Chan film Around the World in 80 Days a few years later). As Miller and Tickner put it: They had not only reverted to type, they had become more English than ever. It was verging on self-parody.No one, inevitably, looks back on any of Englands limited-overs floundering during the 1990s and 2000s with much fondness. Unfortunately, while the pathology was consistent and the diagnoses fairly unanimous (England didnt accord one-day cricket the same status as Tests, and were therefore doomed to repeat the same mistakes), that means there is not too much fresh light to shed. Andrew Strauss admits to errors in selection going into the 2011 World Cup, when England suddenly replaced Steven Davies with Matt Prior - that sent shockwaves through the team - and then subsequently took a punt on an untried Kevin Pietersen as opener, but such revelations dont quite qualify as English crickets version of The X-Files.Strauss may, however, have helped concoct the antidote, with his insistence since taking over as Englands director of cricket on treating the white-ball formats seriously. That has underpinned their startling renaissance since the Alpha-and-Omega failure last year. Moores gamely suggests the scale of that humiliation was the best thing that happened and seems to include his own removal from the coaching job among reasons to be optimistic. Whether the serum has a lasting effect, we are yet to find out; if not, expect 28 Days Data: Reanimated to be an even angrier sequel.28 Days Data Peter Miller and Dave Tickner Pitch Publishing 352 pages, ￡9.99 ' ' '