O’Meara Comes Through in Clutch

Mark O’Meara kept sinking crucial par putts and Curtis Strange kept missing birdie opportunities Sunday until they ran out of holes and O’Meara was the winner of the 44th Bing Crosby Pro-Am.

At the end of a sometimes rainy and sometimes sunny day at Pebble Beach, O’Meara had a gut-it-out, one-over-par 73 to finish at five-under-par 283. Strange, whose putts kept sliding across, under and above the hole, shot a 72 for a 284 and a second-place tie with Japan’s Kikuo Arai and fast-finishing Larry Rinker. Arai scrambled to 71, while Rinker birdied four of the last five holes to march into contention while all the attention was focused on O’Meara and Strange.

It if looked like a grind, O’Meara will tell you it was. If it was football, it would have been a 6-0 game with the winning team making a late goal-line stand.

O’Meara started the day nervously with a two-stroke lead and although Strange kept challenging, and Arai, Rinker and Rex Caldwell had their moments, no one ever caught the big Irishman who learned his golf at Mission Viejo.

Caldwell burst into the spotlight with back-to-back eagles on the second and third holes. The 3-2 scores on the 502-yard par-5 and 388-yard par-4 holes, plus two birdies, gave Caldwell a six-under-par 30 for the front nine, but he never came closer than two shots. He finished with a 66, tied for fifth with Payne Stewart at 285. Stewart also finished with a 66.

O’Meara, who last year won his first tournament, the Greater Milwaukee Open, needed luck and a strong heart to win his second.

He got his first breaks on the first two holes. On No. 1, he drove to the left rough, found his ball covered with mud, and pulled his second shot to the left of a greenside trap. He wedged his third shot over the bunker and sank a eight-foot putt that danced around on the bumpy green before it fell in.

“That was a very important par,” he understated.

On No. 2, O’Meara went for the green in two but again pulled his second shot left of the green into a bunker.

“I was glad to see the ball after the second shot,” O’Meara said. “After I hit it, it sort of disappeared in the cypress trees. It could just have easily hit a tree and dropped down, or kicked out of bounds, but it got through. You need good breaks to win a tournament like this, on such a difficult course, and I got them.”

Strange birdied No. 2 and closed the gap to one stroke when O’Meara saved his par from the trap, but was never able to get any closer despite hitting crisp iron shots to green after green.

O’Meara, who said he was bothered throughout the long day by having wait five minutes or longer between every shot because of the slow play, bogeyed the fifth hole, but got the stroke back with a 20- foot birdie putt on No. 6.

Then he lapsed into a defensive posture where he left potential birdie putts short on five straight holes.

“If it looked like I was hanging on, just trying to survive, that’s exactly what I was doing,” O’Meara said. “I might have been more aggressive if someone had caught me, but as long as no one did, I was content to lag my putts up as close as I could and not charge by two or three feet. As bumpy as the greens were today, there was no such thing as a safe two-footer.”

The bumpy condition of the greens, caused by continuous daily play by the public, prompted Johnny Miller to remark earlier in the tournament that they looked as the San Francisco 49ers had scrimmaged on them.

The last four holes proved nerve wracking for O’Meara, who won the California State Amateur here in 1979, as he faced one crucial putt after another--either his or Strange’s.

On No. 15, a 397-yard par-4, he flew his 8-iron second shot over the green, putted too boldly from the fringe and had to hole a curling six-foot putt to save par. Strange had a shorter birdie putt, but missed a sidehill effort.

On No. 16, a 402-yard par-4, O’Meara was short of the green in two, chipped tentatively and left himself a fast-breaking putt that he knocked in the cup.

On No. 17, a par-3 which was playing 187 yards, O’Meara hit two shots that were probably the difference between winning and losing. After Strange hit a 4-iron to the green, O’Meara elected to try reaching it with a 5-iron.

“The one place I didn’t want to go was over the back, so I dropped down to a 5,” O’Meara explained. “But I drew it a little and the wind got it.”

The ball landed in soft, thick sand, buried so that the top of the ball was below the level of the sand.

“It was plugged, severely so,” O’Meara said. “All I was thinking about was not leaving it in the trap, to get it out somewhere and give myself a chance. I was very pleased with my bunker shot, even when it rolled 10 or 12 feet past the hole.”

O’Meara was up to the task once again as he put a delicate stroke on the ball and rolled in for yet another key par.

On No. 18, the 548-yard monster that is laid out on a bluff overlooking Carmel Bay, O’Meara protectively hit a 1-iron off the tee, followed by a second 1-iron that left him with an 8-iron to the green. He knocked it in 14 feet from the hole. Strange, using a 9-iron from a shorter distance, laid his third shot inside O’Meara’s, about 12 feet from a birdie.

O’Meara, perhaps recalling last year when he took three putts from eight feet to lose the tournament on the last hole, babied his first putt close to the cup for a par. It was then up to Strange, 12-feet away from sending the Crosby into extra holes.

“I felt that Curtis, when he was standing over his putt, would make it, but I was still pleased with my par,” O’Meara said. “I felt I played the hole the right way, leaving it up to Curtis to determine the outcome.”

Strange’s putt was like many of his Sunday, close but not in. It started out to the right and never curled back toward the cup.

O’Meara said: “When they put my name on that rock out there by the first tee, and those 200 people a day who pay $100 to play Pebble Beach read it, no one’s going to ask how I did it.” He already has his name on it once, as last year’s pro-am winner with amateur partner J.P. Diesel of Houston.

Hubert Green and a birdie-shooting 12-handicap partner, Dean Spanos of Stockton, were runaway winners of this year’s pro-am. Spanos, 34, son of San Diego Charger owner Alex Spanos, helped Green by 37 strokes and shot a 33-under-par 255 and finished 11 shots ahead of Jack Nicklaus and his son Jack II, and Dave Eichelberger-Pardee Erdman.

O’Meara won $90,000, upping his 1985 total to $104,625 for four tournaments. Last year, even with only one win, he won $465,873, the third best total in PGA tour history.

“Winning here at Pebble, early in the season, is especially important to me,” O’Meara said, “because I didn’t want people to look at what I did in 1984 and think it was one of those one-year deals, and that I might not have another great year in me. Winning your first tournament is great, but I think winning your second one might mean more.”