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You want scary? Norman was so utterly dominating from brain to bunion that if he had made three more birdies, he would have tied the alltime 72-hole tournament record of 27 under, set 39 years ago by Mike Souchak at the Texas Open on a course with one half of a dogleg and fairways baked harder than Odessa.
Tom Kite, for one, didn't like this deal one bit. Kite, two shots behind Norman's 63 after a gaudy opening day that featured 38 players shooting under 70, said the course was too soft, too lush, too green, too easy, or else how could scores like these be put up? "If this tournament wants to call itself a major, they're going to have to make it more of a challenge," Kite said. That night, Kite sent his steak back for being done too perfectly, asked his doctor if he could arrange, for more lower back pain and burned his favorite slippers.
Remember, this is the course with all the railroad tics, narrow escapes and trap doors, the one Tom Weiskopf called Donkey Kong golf. Jack Nicklaus looked at the marble-slick greens and said that playing them was like trying to stop the ball on a hood of a car. J.C. Snead looked at all the water and said they messed up a perfectly good swamp. Two years ago John Mahaffey looked at the beat-up greens and called the course the Marriott Muni.
"Tom Kite has a short memory," said Zoeller. "We caught this course on a pussycat day. Let's see it blow 30 to 40 miles an hour and see how he likes it." Besides that, Kite was wrong. Only Norman and Zoeller went bonkers last week, everybody else suffering as usual. Indeed, the fifth-place finisher this year, Nick Faldo, shot 277, the same as last year's fifth-place finisher, Mark O'Meara. After his opening round Kite himself never shot in the 60s.
Actually, with Norman stashing the tournament in his locker every night, at least Kite gave people something to talk about. Something, that is, besides why the Tour was going to pick the wrong man to replace the outgoing Beman, who has announced that he will retire by the end of next year.
The suits seem to want deputy commissioner Tim Finchem, who knows where all the double bogeys are buried. Ken Green wants Dan Quayle—"even if he can't spell potato." Payne Stewart thinks the Tour should find another player, somebody who knows what it's like to make a living as a wood- and iron-worker, somebody like Roger Maltbie, but Maltbie spat out his beer when he heard that. Some people would like Hale Irwin, but the 48-year-old Irwin has a date with a few million-dollar T-bills on the Senior PGA Tour.
Whoever it is, the players won't be picking him. Only the 10-man Tournament Policy Board votes—"They told us the other night we're not smart enough to pick a commissioner." said pro John Adams—and only four of those are players. The rest are guys like Tampa Bay Buc owner Hugh Culverhouse, who is to picking talent what Bill Clinton is to picking lawyers. That's why Finchem looks like the chalk favorite. On Saturday he had to go to the airport quick to pick up somebody. Culverhouse.
When it came to fighting for the $450,000 first-prize check, Norman already had a bit of a leg up. Mark Calcavecchia, Phil Mickelson and Mark Wiebe are hobbled with skiing injuries. Fred Couples blew out his back last month at Doral. And 1993 champ Nick Price missed the cut with a vicious head cold. Who says golfers are wimps?
Wire to wire he went. Norman led by two strokes after one round, three strokes after two rounds, and four after three, thanks to his final approach shot Saturday, which came out of jungle rough on 18, over a tree trunk, under a pine tree, sliced away from the water and landed on the green. "Nothin' but net," said Norman with a grin.
