Ed Sneed, who is one of the players' representatives on the PGA Tournament Policy Board, said, "We want the TPC to become a major, but I promise you that you can't have a major if two of our best players have taken an oath that when they come back next year, if the weather is the same again, they're going to withdraw." Sneed was speaking of Trevino and Weiskopf. Trevino, whose ailing back tends to stiffen up in cold weather, withdrew last week even though he had been among the fortunate (or unfortunate) to make the 36-hole cut.
Nicklaus and Ben Crenshaw were the two celebrities who were tied for the lead at two under par with five others after the first 18, the others being John Schroeder, Victor Regalado, Gary Groh, Bobby Wadkins and Gibby Gilbert.
It was on Friday that most of the field began sinking into the Sawgrass swamp, which had become a strange combination of polar ice cap and alligator farm. Some big names shot even bigger numbers. Like Weiskopf's 80. Tom Watson, the player of the year in 1977 and the player of the winter in 1978, missed the cut just as he had done the week before at Doral. Also leaving town early were Johnny Miller, Ray Floyd, Billy Casper, Dave Stockton and Lanny Wadkins.
After 36 holes Nicklaus and Crenshaw were still tied for the lead with identical rounds of 70 and 71, and both were playing superbly. Now Graham had entered the picture, too, creating a three-way tie with his rounds of 71 and 70. For a while it appeared that Graham would share the lead with Nicklaus after Saturday's third round, but then Jack banged in a 22-foot putt for a birdie on the 18th hole and was one shot up at two under par.
From off the tee Graham hasn't missed more than two or three fairways in his whole life. Which is why you can put Graham on a Medinah, where he won the 1975 U.S. Open, or a Southern Hills, where he finished second in the 1977 U.S. Open, or a Sawgrass, and he will be a contender. Also, Graham is a low-ball hitter, and this was helping him in the wind. Add to it the fact that Graham is one of the tour's better chippers and manipulators—he got "up and down" about five times on Friday, and chipped one in on Saturday—and you had just the man to keep Nicklaus awake on Sunday.
For his part, Crenshaw had suffered some sort of a recurring nightmare during the third round. He was paired with Nicklaus, as he had been in the last round of the Masters a year ago when he fell apart. This time Ben didn't fall apart, but his putting stroke left him and he slowly got infected with the 77 disease. In numbers, he was not so far back that he couldn't have won the tournament with a low round on Sunday, but Sawgrass was hardly the place for one to be encouraged about any such prospect.
Nicklaus may well have won the championship at one hole in the third round—the par-4 16th where he salvaged a bogey from a situation that would have led any normal human being to a 12. First, Jack drove into a horrible spot behind a clump of trees, and it looked as if it would take a group of Japanese gardeners on their hands and knees to find his ball. He gouged it out with some weird type of body-English wedge shot and barely cleared a pond up by the green. But this ball was almost lost, too, being buried in a tangled patch of jungle. Nicklaus slashed at it, and if the ball moved, nobody could see it. One could envision Nicklaus in there for the next several days. He lay 3 already and there was no power mower on the way.
Well, what Jack did was somehow rip the ball out of the jungle on his next lusty swing. He got it up on the green about 20 feet past the hole. And, then, naturally, he rolled in the putt for a 5.
Yeah, it was a bogey, but it was a beautiful bogey. And, after all, Sawgrass was an appropriate place for a bogey to win a golf tournament.
