Josh Coley has got to figure out a way to play more golf tournaments.

After a senior season at Lee University during which he won six of the 13 tournaments he played, Coley had to go to work for a living, at Cleveland Golf and Country Club. His work there had limited his playing schedule to two tournaments before this week, one of which he won. That means Coley has won half the tournament he’s played since the fall.

Coley is bidding to add another tournament title to his collection. Following up his first-round 67 with a hard-fought 73 at Council Fire on Saturday, Coley takes a one-shot lead into Sunday’s final round of the Chattanooga Men’s Metro.

Another shot back are Chase Deck, who shot 69 on Saturday, and Chris Farnsworth. Bryce Ledford, a first-round co-leader along with Coley and Pat Corey, battled back from an opening-nine 41, shot 33 on the back nine and came in with a 75 for a two-day total of 142. He’s alone in fourth place. Philip Guess and Paul Apyan are tied at 143.

“It wasn’t pretty out there today,” said Coley, shaking his head at the recollection of a couple of loose swings that started his round going in the wrong direction. “I never got into a groove.”

A hooked tee shot at No. 1 that resulted in a bogey at the par-4 hole got inside Coley’s head and stayed there for a while. Another bogey at the par-3 fourth hole reinforced the negative thought processes, and it didn’t help that his playing partners were struggling as well. After making a birdie at No. 2 to get to 6 under par for the tournament, Ledford played his next five holes in bogey, bogey, double bogey, double bogey, bogey. That landslide dropped him to 1 over for the tournament. Corey made three bogeys in that stretch to fall to 2 under.

“You know how you can sometimes feed off guys in your group when they’re playing well?” Coley said. “Well there was no feeding off anybody in our group. All three of us were scrambling.”

Coley managed to scramble the best of the trio on the front nine. His luck began to change when he birdied the par-4 fifth hole, and another birdie at the tough par-4 No. 8 hole brought him back to par 36 for the front.

Just as he’d done on the opening nine, Coley started poorly on the back. He bogeyed No. 10, then hooked a 5-iron second shot 30 yards left of the par-5 11^th hole. With his ball behind a tree, Coley tried to lob it over with a 60 degree sand wedge, but the clubface went under the ball and he popped it up, 20 yards short of the hole.

The ensuing bogey didn’t do Coley’s disposition any good, and neither did a missed four-foot birdie putt at the par-3 12^th. But he hung in there and made a nice birdie at No. 13, despite short siding himself with his second shot at the par-5 hole. A nice pitch left him a four-footer for birdie. This time he drained it.

Coley’s putter would do more damage the next two holes. He made a 20-footer for birdie at the par-3 14^th, returning him to 5 under for the tournament.

More impressive was his 12-footer par saving putt at No. 15 that followed an unlucky bunker shot that carried his ball down a slope.

“I went to town on Bryce on that one,” Coley said. “He putted on the same line in front of me and gave me the line.”

Coley gave a stroke back at No. 16 after leaving himself in a near-impossible up-and-down situation behind the green. With the pin cut in the back, Coley’s only shot was to pitch the ball along the fringe and hope it didn’t get caught up in the grass. It didn’t. The ball trickled down hill about 10 feet past the pin, a great shot by nearly anyone’s standards. But Coley missed his par putt to fall back to 1 over for the day and four under for the tournament.

He parred out to finish at 73.

Ledford, meanwhile, did his best to maintain his sanity and his swing after the front-nine 41. He made four back-nine birdies at Nos. 11, 13, 16 and 18 against a bogey at No. 15. The resulting 74 kept him in the ballgame heading into Sunday’s final round.

The finale promises to be interesting. Council Fire director of golf Hunt Gilliland said the course will be set up long.

“We’ll play the tips on every hole but one,” Gilliland said.

Surprisingly, that one hole is one of the shortest par 4s on the golf course, No. 5. The hole will be played from the orange tee yardage of 333 and the pin will be cut three paces from the front of the green. Golfers can take a crack at driving the green if they don’t mind the hazard that looms large down the right side of the fairway.