PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — Will Zalatoris was tied for second at 11-under-par with only five holes left to survive Saturday at TPC Sawgrass. That’s when the triple threat of Pete Dye, 30 mph gusts and volatility at The Players Championship got him.

A little over an hour later, Zalatoris walked out of the scoring building with a tight scowl. He headed straight for the parking lot, his caddie shuffling close behind.

Quadruple bogey, double bogey, par, double bogey, bogey to finish a third-round 78. Zalatoris went from 11-under to 2-under, tied for second to outside of the top 30 and 10 shots behind the leader, J.J. Spaun.

“You’ve got balls blowing all over the place, putts getting blown by the wind, balls getting knocked down, balls getting stood up,” playing partner Lucas Glover said. “When it’s gusty like this, there’s some luck involved even when you hit good shots.”

If Thursday and Friday were marked by easy conditions at TPC Sawgrass, the weekend at the Players has turned into a battle. Slammed clubs. Expeditions into the wilderness. Misreads with balls flying into the gallery. Swirling winds made life difficult all day, and for an hour on the back nine nearly the entire field fell into disarray. Rory McIlroy took four shots to go 49 yards. The No. 1 player in the world lost his temper. At one point, the Glover-Zalatoris group had five double bogeys or worse in a four-hole span. By the time Glover hit his tee shot on 17 into the water, a woman in the gallery let out a large cackle.

Seven players shot in the 60s on Saturday, and only one — Bud Cauley’s 66 to end the day one back of the lead — did so teeing off after 11 a.m.

Really only one golfer was able to withstand the worst of the conditions and come out alive, and that was the 5-foot-8, 34-year-old journeyman Spaun, who enters Sunday with the lead at the Players.

“No one was doing anything crazy, and I was just kind of like riding the storm out and just trying to limit mistakes and keep hitting fairways and greens,” Spaun said.

The 36-hole co-leaders Akshay Bhatia and Min Woo Lee were already off to rough starts by the time they reached the fifth hole. Then, they launched drives way left and, assisted by the wind, well into the trees. That sparked a several-minute search party, highlighted by Lee’s maneuvering through the trees as NBC’s cameras watched before both decided to take an unplayable lie. They then went around those woods and went so far back — roughly 60 yards behind their tee shots — to hit from the private driving range and lay up from 250 yards out. It took them 25 minutes to finish the hole, both double-bogeying to fall from the top of the leaderboard.

Bhatia was able to slightly bounce back to shoot 75 for 8-under on the week, four back of Spaun, but Lee shot 78 to fall seven back.

Scottie Scheffler has been on the verge of something this week. He slammed a wedge into the base of his staff bag Friday and scolded himself for a misread on the third green: “I’d love a lip out. Just a good lip out,” he chirped on the way to the next tee. Saturday’s vexing conditions didn’t help the matter. Scheffler became exasperated by changing wind directions and putts skirting by the hole, and thanks to the broadcast’s hot mics, his frustration was abundantly clear.

On No. 17, Scheffler’s 6-foot par putt brushed the edge of the cup but didn’t drop. That ball soon ended up at the bottom of the lake via Scheffler’s backhanded toss. Scheffler let out a similar burst of rage on the final fairway when his approach shot flew more than 15 yards past the pin and into the rough. He threw up his hands in disgust, asked caddie Ted Scott for any semblance of an explanation and tossed his club at his bag, lying horizontally on the fairway. The best player in the world is tied for 16th, seven shots behind Spaun.

Zalatoris was playing some of the steadiest golf at TPC Sawgrass. Three under on the day, 10-under-par in his last 27 holes, before he lost it all. One of the newly restored features at the course this year set him up for disaster. Bordered by pine straw, a series of steep undulations — Pete Dye’s “moguls” — line the 14th fairway and set players up for severe ball-above-the-feet lies. Zalatoris could barely find his way out, advancing the ball just 59 feet into another swale. Zalatoris gained on the hole eventually, but his approach into the green ricochetted into the greenside bunker. “What kind of a kick is that?” he yelled to his caddie. “Oh, my gosh. Wow.” Zalatoris took four shots to finish out from there. He walked off the green stunned, a quadruple bogey on his card.

“I’ve been there,” Glover said. “You don’t say anything. You just stay in your little bubble and leave him alone and shake his hand and tell him to shake it off when you’re done.”

Essentially every star contender took a tumble at some point as conditions worsened. World No. 4 Collin Morikawa shot a 77 with seven bogeys to drop from fourth place to 22nd. Tommy Fleetwood entered the day five back of the lead and played par golf on the front nine before three bogeys and a double bogey on 17 to shoot 75.

McIlroy was under par and the clear betting favorite as he approached the 12th hole. He managed the conditions well all day. Unfortunately for him, his short game led to bogeys on Nos. 12, 13 and 17 to fall behind. His birdie on 18 got him within four of Spaun.

“I felt like I played well tee to green, controlled my flight well and hit the shots I wanted to hit,” McIlroy said. “I just made a few too many mistakes around the greens and on the greens.”

So we head to the final 18 holes of the biggest event of the PGA Tour season with a leaderboard topped by names like Spaun, Cauley, Glover and Alex Smalley. The conditions aren’t going to get any easier, with projected 20 mph winds and afternoon storms that led to the tour’s moving tee times up so early the leaders go off in threesomes at 10:01 a.m.

As we learned Saturday, tough conditions lead to volatility, and much of golf will be watching to see whether a star like McIlroy will catch up to the journeymen who’ve survived this long. One reporter asked McIlroy whether he prefers these conditions.

“Yes, absolutely,” he said. “I think when you’re a little further back, you’d rather have some testy conditions.”

(Top photo of Min Woo Lee: Logan Bowles / Getty Images)