Someone said, well, Elder missed the cut but look who made it: a Japanese (Jumbo Ozaki), a Chinese (Mr. Lu), an Indian (Rod Curl), three Mexicans (Trevino, Homero Blancas, Vic Regalado), one Englishman (Maurice Bembridge), two Australians (Graham Marsh, Bruce Devlin), three South Africans (Gary Player, Bobby Cole, Hugh Baiocchi) and two amateurs (George Burns, Jerry Pate).
The Masters' final Sunday never lets you down for excitement, but the earlier rounds can frequently be routine. Now and again, however, one of them etches itself into the grand annals of the tournament's history, and such was the case with Saturday's third round. Mostly, it will become known as Miller's Saturday despite the shotmaking Weiskopf provided much later in the day.
Miller admitted he began the tournament "choking." He bogeyed the very first hole on Thursday and bad-putted his way to a 75. Even after a second-round 71 he was no more a part of the tournament than the veranda standers. At 146 he was 11 strokes behind Nicklaus, and some of the players were leaning back in their leather chairs in the locker room and saying, "By the way, whatever happened to the Nicklaus-Miller duel?"
Now came Saturday, a day that gleamed with bright weather compared to the mist and rain of the first two rounds. Miller had teed off early and he was finishing the front nine as Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer were about to begin at 2:10 p.m.
At the Masters they post notes of interest on the huge scoreboards that rise up out of the pines. On the one everybody can see from the putting green, from behind the 9th and 18th greens and from the veranda, a note was posted: Miller four under. Nicklaus and Palmer glanced casually at the scoreboard as they loitered on the putting green, and Jack said later that he couldn't tell immediately whether it was a red four (for under) or a green four (for over par). Nicklaus is color-blind.
It did occur to him, though, that there would be no news value in posting a four-over number.
"Pretty good round Miller's got going," Nicklaus said to Palmer.
"Yeah, four under," Palmer said.
"Six," Nicklaus said, pointing out that Miller had been two over par when the day began.
Palmer squinted at the scoreboard.
"Yeah, not bad," he said.
Nicklaus smiled. "I guess not," he said. "It's only an alltime record."
