Waters Too Deep Even for Shark

DUBLIN, Ohio — There are words in the language you don’t want to hear. “Diphtheria.” “Overdrawn.” “The check is in the mail,” and so on.

And there are words on the golf course you don’t want to hear. “I think you better reload, that’s O.B.” comes to mind. Or “Where’s that going!” Or “I think you pulled that.” Or even “Bite! Bite!” Or “Get legs! Get legs!” “Splash!” neither the sound, nor the word, is something you want to hear.

But at Jack Nicklaus’ Memorial tournament here this week, by far the worst words in the language are “It’s raining again!”

When an auto race track is wet, you can’t run. When a baseball park is wet you can’t play. Tennis is a no-no. You get rainouts.

But a golf course you can play in the rain. Until it becomes a deluge--or is accompanied by lightning. You just put on your rain gear, sigh and go out and take one more club than normal for each shot.

Rain can even help. Balls tend to stop where they land. They don’t run into trouble on you, they don’t bounce off greens. You don’t get any fairway roll--but sometimes you don’t want any.

This tournament looked like 78 guys waiting for the Robert E. Lee. You could have run barges down the fairways most of the weekend.

It should be no surprise that a great white shark should be able to prowl these waters, striking terror in the hearts of all the landlubbers he was stalking. You didn’t dare let your golf game bleed.

The fin showed up in these waters about 3 o’clock Sunday when the third round resumed. Greg Norman was there, teeth and all. They should have bullhorned, “Everybody out of the water!”

Norman had eight birdies in the 14 holes he played and should have had nine. He missed a three-foot putt on No. 10 that he could have kicked in.

Tournament over? Fatal shark sighting?

Hardly. Greg Norman may be the unluckiest pro ever to pick up a stick. The things that have happened to him should have happened to Saddam Hussein. His career has been a miasma of guys chipping in miracle shots over his head to steal tournaments he thought he had safely won.

The things that happened to him in the 1996 Masters should have had a warning attached, “Not suitable for sensitive viewers or those under 17.” Strong men couldn’t bring themselves to watch.

Sunday might have been one more hit by the truck of misfortune that seems to be following him around.

Golf is a game which, if you’re on, you’re on. The putts start to fall, the birdies pile up and you take the club back in the sure knowledge your muscles will take over by memory and the ball will wind up exactly where you want.

When this happens, the last thing you want to do is stop. Not even for a hot dog at the turn. Your rhythm is in sync, your heart sings and you have the confidence of a guy with his own deck and a pocket full of chips.

That was Norman going down Muirfield’s fairways Sunday. He was taking the golf course apart shot by shot. He started the day eight shots behind Scott Hoch, but by the time he got to 14, he was one shot behind.

These were shark-infested waters. Hoch was having trouble defending himself against the course but the shark was in full attack. The chances are, there would be nothing left of Hoch but a pant-leg sticking out of the shark’s mouth by No. 18 if they kept playing.

But, alas, they honked the horn for the umpteenth time this week and stopped play. The skies opened up and dropped four-tenths of an inch of rain in about 10 minutes. You couldn’t even play water polo out there. U-boats could lurk in it.

Norman had to pick up, along with the rest of the field. Norman, of course, thinks he can pick it up where he left off. Norman is always sure the next card will be an ace, the next roll a seven, and there will be a pony there someplace under all that compost.

But, they have now run up the white flag. The PGA decided this tournament will be only 54 holes--which seems fitting enough since they’ve been three days trying to squeeze in 18.

If the weather intervenes again--and that’s the way to bet--and half the field doesn’t get it in on Monday, they’ll send the tournament back to 36 holes. And they’ll wipe out Greg’s incandescent round.

You have a vision of Norman, at the pearly gates, someday, asking, “Why me, Lord?”

It was supposed to be just another kind of ticker-tape parade for Tiger Woods. And, while he played creditably enough, Woods found a couple of watery graves for his shots this week. As Sam Snead used to say “The sun don’t shine on the same dog’s tail every day.” Still, Woods was a dogged two-under par with seven holes to play at the sound of the horn.

Norman may be running out of holes. He has only four to play. The elegant Fijian, Vijay Singh, is tied for the lead with Hoch, and they have eight left.

Norman will need some luck for them to fritter away the one-shot lead they have over him. And luck is the one club in the bag Greg Norman has no idea how to play.