Eddie Pepperell heads into the final round of his Open Championship debut at St Andrews today confident he can challenge for the Claret Jug.

The 24-year-old, from Abingdon, shot up the leaderboard yesterday after carding a six-under-par 66 to finish eight-under.

At one stage, he shared the lead on ten-under-par, but a double bogey on the 17th saw him fall back.

The Frilford Heath ace is four shots behind joint leaders Paul Dunne, Louis Oosthuizen and Jason Day in tied for 15th place and will tee off at 1.20pm.

Pepperell needed only 25 putts across 18 holes yesterday, the third fewest in the field, and believes his short game will be key today.

He said: “My putting was good and it’s going to be the guy with the hottest putter, depending a little bit on the conditions, that’s going to come closest to winning this tournament because you can have a lot of birdie opportunities.

“If I can keep putting well and keep the pace that I’ve got on the greens, then I feel like I can make enough birdies to certainly give it a run.”

Pepperell began the third round on two-under-par and got off to a flying start, with birdies at five out of the first six holes.

A five-under-par 31 on the front nine lifted him up to fourth and the 24-year-old continued in the same vein on the way back in by making up another shot on the par four tenth.

Successive birdies on 15 and 16 saw him join overnight leader Dustin Johnson on ten-under.

He needed to finish with back-to-back birdies to become the first man in major history to shoot 62, but hit his tee-shot out of bounds and into the Old Course Hotel on the 17th.

After two-putting for a six, he parred the last hole to finish on eight-under and insists he was not affected by the pressure of being top of the leaderboard.

He said: “I knew I was in a good position, but I didn’t care where I was at on the leaderboard.

“I felt very confident on the tee shot on 17 and maybe did not focus on one or two things that would help me into the left-to-right wind that I tend to struggle with.

“You could argue there was a bit of complacency there, but I did not want to bail out left because that’s admitting defeat on a tough hole.

“To finish double bogey-par is disappointing around this golf course.”