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Rory McIlroy will not be stopped at Congressional. Any reasonable thought Rory McIlroy will blow this U.S. Open died in the ankle-high grass halfway down the left side of Congressional’s 11th fairway Saturday afternoon. Far in the distance the ball plunked down a few feet from the hole. And right then the tournament was over.

The making of Rory McIlroy as the greatest golfer in the world has needed a moment where he will not be broken. No one doubts the talent – the splendid swing like a great baseball slugger, the smooth gentle putts that roll as if drawn by magnets to the hole – but his story has always included these enormous implosions. Saturday, in round three, he could have wavered. Because play was suspended on Friday, the second round needed to be finished in the morning which pushed his tee time back to 3:50 p.m. To keep his mind focused on Saturday, McIlroy tried to set little goals, the most significant of which was to finish the day 15-under par. The rest of the field surged to catch up, with lots of 66s, 67s and 68s on the scoreboard and yet McIlroy kept pushing ahead – to 12 and 13 under.

Then came the 10th hole on which he had two missed putts for a bogey and following that was his drive on the 11th that rocketed through the soggy air, landing left in the thick rough. Suddenly, he seemed shaky again, the kid in Augusta who somehow wound up by the cabins watching his first major title fly away with every swing of his club. It was just a few month ago when the Rory McIlroy, the golfing superstar from Northern Ireland, had a four-stroke lead lead heading into the final round of the Masters. What happened next was hard to watch as the 22-year old sprayed the ball all over Augusta National Golf Club to shoot 80 and lose a chance to collect his first major title.

Fast forward to Sunday afternoon, after three unbelievable rounds of golf, McIlroy will begin the final round of the 111th US Open at Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, MD with a 54-hole record score of 14-under par and an eight-shot lead over Korea's Y.E. Yang. Yang sits in second place at 6-under par, while Robert Garrigus (USA), Jason Day (Australia) and Lee Westwood (England) each are a total of 5-under par, nine shots off the lead.

Needless to say, golf fans will either witness the greatest collapse in golf history Sunday or something nobody, not even Tiger Woods or Jack Nicklaus, has accomplished.

Entering the final round, McIlroy leads the field in birdies made (15), greens in regulation (85.19 percent) and head-shaking moments (roughly a dozen or more).

Watch Jun 16, 2011 US Open Championship Live Online

A chance to keep the ball in play and take a bit of the normal, um, excitement that comes with his sometimes wild driver.

Pop three wedges in to bag. Plot every possibility -- we’re talking to the Nth degree -- in practice rounds.

As NBC’s Dan Hicks said Wednesday, “With Tiger out, it’s the Phil Mickelson show coming in.”

“I played the 16th hole six over par, and it ended up costing me the tournament,’’ Mickelson said. “I learned a lot about how to play a U.S. Open that week because a lot of times par 5s, which I normally think of as a birdie hole, in the U.S. Open a lot of times it's the toughest par.

“There have been some Opens where … I'm trying to think of an example, where the par 5 has been the highest … some of the highest scoring averages on the golf course. It's changed my thought process about being overly aggressive in the par 5s.”

Over the years, he’s learned to control his misses and salvage pars. He’s learned to stop putting pressure on himself to hit every fairway -- it just isn’t going to happen -- and play perfect golf.

And those five runner-up finishes? “I might look at it the same way in that I was 0 for 40 something winning a major and I really wanted to win and I'm 0 for 20 something in U.S. Opens,’’ Mickelson said. “The way I see it is when I finally did break through and won my first major, my thought process was not to worry about winning, not to worry about the result, but to enjoy the entire tournament, enjoy the process, enjoy the challenge of trying to win.

I'm going to have fun this week playing and trying to compete in our national championship. … I've been playing some of my better golf. And I also believe that the course setup and the golf course itself provides a great opportunity for me to showcase the way I've been playing. But I can't worry about the result. Each shot is going to be very challenging and each hole will be a difficult par and so forth. And rather than worrying about the result after 72 holes, I'm trying to think about the process of playing the type of golf I want to play around this course.

I don't want to put any time pressure on my ability or belief in my ability to win.’’

“I've always felt as though Tiger helped bring out … has helped bring out some of my best golf over the years,’’ Mickelson said. Watch Jun 16, 2011 US Open Championship Live Online