Rivals Falter; Green in Clover With 3-Shot Lead

Cherry Hills, the proud mile-high golf course that players and press called “easy,” “Mickey Mouse” and a “pitch-and-putt course” earlier in the week, thumbed its nose at the world’s greatest professionals Saturday.

There were 31 sub-par rounds over the par-71 course when Doug Tewell set a Cherry Hills-record 64 in Thursday’s opening round of the 67th PGA Championship. Saturday, on a magnificent summer day, there were only 6.

Hubert Green had one, a 70, and when Lee Trevino shot 75, Fred Couples 76, Tom Watson 74, Peter Jacobsen 75 and Tewell 77, Green found himself three strokes in the lead going into today’s final round of the $700,000 tournament.

Green is at seven-under-par 67-69-70--206. Trevino is next at 209, followed by Couples, Watson and South Africa’s Nick Price at 211.

Price had the day’s only serious par-buster with a 65 to jump from a tie for 49th into a tie for third.

At 212, with only a glimmering of hope if Green should collapse today, are Jacobsen, Lanny Wadkins (73) and Scott Simpson (72).

Pre-tournament favorite Severiano Ballesteros had his first sub-par round of the tournament, a 68, and shared the 213 slot with Tewell (six bogeys and no birdies) and Andy Bean (72).

Five-time winner Jack Nicklaus’ hopes of collecting No. 6 collapsed with a 74 that left him nine shots back.

Trevino, who had a string of six straight PGA rounds in the 60s broken, blamed rock-hard greens for the high scores, but greens superintendent Armen Sumy said it was “the third round of a major, and it always happens when the players start thinking about where they are.”

Sumy said the greens were not watered overnight and that they were rolled with a 30-pound roller to smooth out divot and spike marks.

Trevino was not impressed.

“I hit six shots, four of them sand wedges, that landed on the green, took one hop and ended up over the green in the gallery or in a bunker,” the defending champion said. “The green on No. 10 was so hard, you could land a 747 on it.”

Watson, winless on this year’s tour and still looking for his first PGA win, said the greens were “like concrete.”

Players were unanimous, however, that the greens themselves--the putting surfaces--were the best on the tour. The complaints were that they would not hold approach shots.

Saturday’s round started with Trevino a stroke in front of Couples, and two ahead of Green and Tewell.

Couples and Tewell started sliding backward from the start, leaving the spotlight on Trevino and Green. The big swing of the round came on the sixth hole, where Trevino took three putts for a bogey and Green knocked a 7-iron second shot two feet from the hole for a birdie. The two-shot shift put Green in front to stay.

It was Trevino’s first three-putt green in the tournament.

“That might have looked like the turning point,” Trevino said, “but the real turning point for me came on the first hole. When I hit a perfect sand wedge from 90 yards and it took one bounce and went in the gallery, I knew I was in for a long day. I thought I hit that shot as good as I could hit it. It landed exactly where I wanted it to land, and the next thing I saw was the gallery scrambling around to get out of the way.”

That caused the first of Trevino’s four bogeys, and one of the others was a carbon copy.

Trevino, who had a hot putter the first two days, couldn’t make a birdie.

“I had a bad stroke all day,” he said “I’ve seen better strokes in the intensive care ward.”

Green, meanwhile, was keeping his ball out of the rough and bouncing his low-trajectory shots from the fairway onto the green, where he could make relatively routine pars. His lead was four shots from the 10th hole until No. 18, where he missed a seven-foot putt for a bogey.

“I wasn’t putting great, but I wasn’t putting poorly, either,” Green said. “I was just looking to two-putt on these greens, and I managed to do that today.”

Green, 38, has won 18 tour events and the 1977 U.S. Open at Southern Hills but has only one win since 1981. In 1983, he played so poorly he contemplated giving up the tour but was encouraged to keep trying by his wife, Karen, and good friend Fuzzy Zoeller.

“I am very fortunate to have had such support when I was down,” Green said. “I have always wanted to do everything well, and when I don’t, I can be very hard on myself. That’s been a trait of Hubert Green. It took Fuzzy to get me to relax and enjoy myself.

“This week, I am enjoying myself. I don’t care how tomorrow turns out. I just don’t want to fall back. If one of the guys comes up to me, we’ll see what happens. But I’m going to go out and play the same way I played today--aggressively. In that respect, I’m like Lanny Wadkins. I don’t know any other way except to knock it up there as quickly as I can and get it in the hole. Either I win, or I go home. I’ve never played for second or third, so consequently, I don’t have many top 10 finishes. If I played it safe, I might have a lot more money, but it’s just not my nature.”

Price, who won the 1983 World Series of Golf in his first year on the tour, had five birdies and an eagle, with two bogeys. His eagle, on the 577-yard 11th hole, where he reached the green in two shots, was one of only two all day.

Several others flirted with moving into contention, only to stumble on the back nine.

Masters champion Bernhard Langer was under par when he bogeyed three holes in a row and followed that with a double-bogey on No. 16. Two-time PGA champion Wadkins was tied with Trevino in second place but drove into the creek on No. 14 and took a double-bogey. Jacobsen also shared second place before falling to pieces with a 40 on the finishing nine.