He is the man being credited with unleashing the “scary potential” hiding within 25-year-old Jordan Zunic and now Nick O’Hern has revealed just what his new pupil must do to claim the Australian PGA Championship at RACV Royal Pines Sunday.

With a large storm predicted to sweep through Queensland’s south-east around midday on Sunday the final round has been brought forward significantly with both tees to be in use and the first groups to tee off at 6am AEST and the last featuring Zunic, Cameron Smith and Adam Bland to tee off at 8am.

Late in the third round Smith was trailing Zunic by as many as six shots and needing to produce something extraordinary to claim his first major Australian tournament but his playing partner’s late stumble where he dropped three shots in the final two holes has brought the 24-year-old PGA Tour winner well and truly into the mix.

If there was ever a way to shoot a disappointing round of 64 in a major Australian tournament, this was it.

Zunic’s explosive start to the third round yielded seven birdies in his first nine holes and generated a buzz that a first 59 on both the Australasian and European tours was in the offing.

That buzz turned into genuine expectation when he made a gutsy par save at the par-5 12th and birdies at the 13th, 14th and 16th holes to be 11-under with three holes to play only for a bogey at 17 and double-bogey at 18 to seemingly suck the life out of a young man who now has a three-shot lead with 18 holes to play.

Zunic’s round of 64 equalled the course record set by Rhein Gibson in the 2015 Australian PGA but he will have call upon all of the lessons in Nick O’Hern’s book, ‘Tour Mentality’, to pick up the pieces after his disastrous finish.

Zunic revealed after an opening round of 66 that he had read O’Hern’s book at the insistence of his partner and caddie, Olivia, and the former PGA champion spent time with Zunic on Tuesday working on his mental approach to the game.

The pair spoke again on Saturday morning and will have one further discussion before Zunic tees it up on Sunday morning but just minutes after Zunic had completed his round O’Hern revealed to Australian Golf Digest how he will instruct him to overcome any last-round nerves.

“The great players have a knack to almost make time slow down and for guys that struggle, time speeds up,” O’Hern said. “Tomorrow that will be a good indication, if he starts walking quickly and things like that, especially between shots.

“He’s just got to relax and enjoy the walk and then when he gets to his shot re-focus and really dedicate his time to that shot and after he’s hit it switch off again.

“On a Sunday that’s harder to do than a Thursday, Friday, Saturday because the result is looming. It’s going to be fun to watch.”

Zunic’s late stumble was set in motion by a 2-iron that reached the bunker on the left side of the 17th fairway some 270 metres from the tee and although he and O’Hern had worked on another option with driver on Tuesday, the tour veteran backed the youngster’s decision to use the same club he had taken the first two days.

“He hit the 2-iron, which was the right play, but the adrenaline was going,” said O’Hern [below].

“When he hit that second shot into the greenside bunker I knew that was going to plug and bogey was going to be a good score and let’s just see how he comes home.

“There was nothing wrong with how he played the last couple of holes, he just got a bit unlucky. He rode the wave all the way to the end and sometimes it goes your way, sometimes it doesn’t.

“It was great to see today that he just kept the momentum going the whole way until the last couple of holes obviously.

“That’s a pretty special thing. You don’t see that in many players.”

By the time he had reached the media centre for his post-round press conference Zunic had already moved past his unfortunate finish – “What two holes?” – and set his sights on what he needs to do on Sunday to turn a three-shot lead into possession of the Joe Kirkwood Cup.

“If you had told me that I was going to have 64 at the start of today, I would have taken it, that’s for sure,” said Zunic, winner of the 2015 New Zealand Open.

“It was a shame what happened on the last two holes, but to be honest, I didn’t even do much wrong. I still stuck to my processes on the last two holes. I mean, that’s all you can do.

“We’ve still got 18 holes of golf left tomorrow, which is a lot of golf. So if I can go out there and do what I did today and just stay in a great mindset, I feel like I’ll give myself every opportunity.”