Pereira leads Varner by 1, Torque head team competition at LIV Golf DC

POTOMAC FALLS: In addition to battling a course that was reluctant to give up low scores Saturday at LIV Golf DC, Mito Pereira also had to battle allergy problems midway through his second round.

He overcame both issues — and now he’s 18 holes away from his first LIV Golf title.

The Torque GC member from Chile shot a 5-under 67 that included 10 birdies and five bogeys to take a one-stroke lead at 9 under going into Sunday’s final round at Trump National Golf Club, Washington, D.C.

His closest pursuer is first-round leader Harold Varner III, whose even-par 72 left him at 8 under. Henrik Stenson and Kevin Na are another shot back in a bunched leaderboard in which 20 pursuers are within six shots of Pereira’s lead.

Pereira hopes to become Torque’s first individual winner while his team seeks its second team title of the 2023 LIV Golf League season, having won the third event in Orlando. Torque leads the team leaderboard by three shots over Varner’s RangeGoats GC and Stinger GC, the winners two weeks ago in Tulsa.

Pereira said both the individual and team leaderboards will be top of mind on Sunday.

“The team aspect, it’s really cool to watch it out there,” Pereira said. “It’s nice to have that in the background and just hope we can take the win again.”

Pereira also hopes that his allergy problems will not impact his performance like they threatened to do Saturday.

“It was really, really bad. I just tried to keep myself together and tried to play good and just take the allergy how it is,” Pereira said.

Varner, who opened with an 8-under 64 on Friday, hopes to rebound from a second round that was not as productive as he had hoped but still leaves him in contention. He will need his putter to cooperate better, as he