Love’s Dream Ends When Clock Strikes 12 : Golf: After shooting a 32 on the front nine and getting a birdie on 11, he has a triple-bogey seven and the tournament turns.

Through 11 holes it was a dream round. Davis Love III was in “the zone,” that trance-like state players like to talk about when almost every shot comes off as planned and the cup keeps getting in the way of putts.

“He was in another world, playing at a different level,” said Tom Sieckmann, one of his partners at Riviera Country Club during the third round of the Nissan Los Angeles Open on Saturday.

The dream turned to disaster in the barranca in front of the 12th green.

That’s where Love took a triple-bogey seven and turned what had been his private tournament into an open event again.

Love, who shot a 63 to take the second round lead Friday, shot a four-under-par 32 on the front nine Saturday.

Going to the 413-yard 12th hole, he was coming off a birdie that put him at 17 under par for the tournament, five under for the day and pushing toward Lanny Wadkins’ Los Angeles Open record of 20 under, set in 1985.

Love led by four strokes.

On 12, he pushed his drive slightly, barely enough to clip some twigs from a eucalyptus tree.

“It wasn’t a bad drive. It was about on the same line as Sandy’s (Lyle), but his didn’t catch a tree. Mine did,” Love said.

Love said his second shot wasn’t a difficult one from 200 yards from the pin: “It was just a four-iron. It was plenty of club to get there.”

He believed he had hit a decent shot, but it, too, caught the tree. The ball went through the branches and into the barranca, where the grass was several feet deep. “If that shot would have been knocked down (by the tree), I would have had an easy pitch to the green and might have even had a chance to save a par,” Love said.

But from the barranca, it was more difficult.

Love could have declared his ball unplayable and taken a penalty drop, but thought he had a chance to hack it out and onto the green.

On his third shot, the ball stayed in the barranca. He finally got it out on his fourth shot, chipped onto the green with his fifth and two-putted from 10 feet.

Triple bogey. A new tournament.

“It was sad to see something like that,” said Sieckmann, one of the players who was suddenly a contender again.

Lyle, who also was playing with Love, said he felt badly for Love, but he wasn’t as compassionate as Sieckmann.

“We weren’t jumping up and down because he let us back in,” Lyle said, “but that’s golf. It never was a fair game.”

Although Love said he thought he managed to compose himself after the hole, he was one over par the rest of the day and wound up with a one-under-par 70 that left him tied at 13-under 200 with Lyle and Sieckmann, one stroke behind Fred Couples.

“This game is all about momentum,” Love said, “and I just couldn’t get it going again after that. I wasn’t hitting any bad shots, but I wasn’t making anything, either.”

After Couples caught him with a birdie at the 16th, Love bogeyed the 15th to fall from the lead.

Love still feels good about his chances going into the final round.

“If I can eagle that first hole, I might have the lead again,” he said.

If he is in the lead when he reaches the 12th tee, he promises that his drive will be nowhere near the trees bordering the right side of the fairway.