Norman, Soaked to Sharkskin, Leads by Only a Shot, as Usual

Maybe Ho Ming Chung will win it. Anything can happen now. Ho, from Taiwan, is the only golfer who broke par Saturday in the British Open, shooting a 69 in the third round. So who cares if he is nine strokes behind the man in first place? No one is safe.

The winner might well be Australia’s Greg Norman, Mr. Third Nighter himself, who remains the leader but only by one shot. The Shark, as the white-haired Norman is known as, has made a habit of leading big golf tournaments by one shot going into the final round, already having done so in this year’s Masters and U.S. Open. He has had more close calls than a knife thrower.

The challenger closest to him is Tsuneyuki (Tommy) Nakajima of Japan, who was six strokes behind Norman after eight holes Saturday but was only a stroke behind by the time the golfers sloshed home in the rain, soaked to the skin.

“This is unbelievable round,” said Nakajima, whose eyeglasses could have used windshield wipers.

This is also unbelievable tournament. Winds like cyclones one day, calm and record-tying scores the next day, summer storm the third day. “The idea today,” said Norman, who led by two strokes after the second round, “was just to get back to the clubhouse without killing yourself.”

Norman is at 211, having a line score of 74-63-74 on the par-70 Turnberry course. Nakajima is at 212, and two shots back of Nakajima are the wee Welshman, 5-4 Ian Woosnam, who shot his second par round in three days, and an Englishman, Gordon J. Brand, whose 75 still wasn’t bad enough to remove him from contention.

No one in the tournament is under par of 210 for three rounds.

About the only guys clearly out of contention are the sultans of ‘77, Tom Watson and Jack Nicklaus, both of whom could end up 30 strokes or more off their record totals of that last Turnberry tournament. They shot 268 and 269 in that Open, Watson winning. At the moment, Watson is at 225, Nicklaus at 227.

Watson, evidently, has been hiding the fact that he has suffered from food poisoning, not wanting to sound like Alibi Tom. It seems he ordered a plate of mussels last Wednesday that violently disagreed with him. To watch him four-putt the 18th green Saturday, for a 77, was to suspect that Watson was not at his best.

As for Nicklaus, he shot a 76 and a cop. His Golden Bear No. 2 ball smacked Sgt. Ian Littlejohn of the Strathclyde Police Dept. on the right wrist as it headed for the gallery near the 17th green. Later on, Big Jack gave Littlejohn the ball for a souvenir.

Watson and Nicklaus are surely out of it, but what about the trio at 217, six shots off the pace? Nick Faldo, Gary Koch and Jose-Maria Canizares would like to consider themselves still in the hunt. And the players at 218--Raymond Floyd, Bernhard Langer, David Graham, Sam Torrance? “I think those guys are too far back,” Norman said.

Wishful thinking, perhaps.

The 115th British Open has brought out the best and worst in the game’s best. Norman did some spectacular shotmaking Saturday, only to bogey six of the last 10 holes. Nakajima made a remarkable chip to save par at the 12th, only to 2-iron a ball into the creek at No. 16, double-bogeying.

This will be the final twosome of the tournament, and Nakajima is looking forward to it. Although he uses an interpreter in interviews, he does speak a fair bit of English, and expects to enjoy Norman’s companionship.

“Does Norman speak any Japanese?” Nakajima was asked.

“Yes. ‘Arigato,’ “ he replied.

Norman hopes to be saying that --”thank you”--in any language today, because he is overdue to win a big one. Mostly, he wants the tournament to be decided by good golf, not by stormy weather. Coming to the clubhouse after Saturday’s round, Norman was wan, weary, waterlogged and thoroughly disgusted with the elements.

“I just hope we won’t have to put up with it again,” he said. “It’s no fun out there for the players or for the spectators. It’s no fun coming up for the 18th hole of perhaps the biggest golf tournament in the world, only to find out that everybody’s basically gone home. Like I said, all you’re thinking about at that point is trying not to take a triple or quadruple bogey, and to finish the round without hurting yourself.”

The rain was not so much torrential as it was cold and relentless. “You couldn’t look more than two feet off the ground,” Norman said. “The rain was coming down horizontal, so if you looked up, it would hit you in the eye and sting you. Sometimes you would pull the trigger too soon because you just couldn’t stand to stand over the ball any longer.”

It got to Floyd, too, making him rush off at day’s end, feeling feverish, eager for a hot bath.

Floyd worked hard for a 73. So many of his putts stopped just short that before long he was blaming his misfortune on a caddy pulling a pin back and raking the rim of the hole with it, wrinkling the lip.

He was miserable. “I played really well and got nothing out of it,” Floyd said. “I’m out of the championship.”

Not at seven strokes down, he’s not. Don’t even count out Manuel Pinero, or Vicente Fernandez, or Jose-Maria Olazabal, or Gregory Turner, the immortals at 219. Nobody is out of it until they’re out of it. Remember the Nicklaus!

So long as older fellows are having such a good year, Nicklaus and Floyd having taken the first two Grand Slam events, perhaps the British Open will belong to Canizares, one of the two Jose-Marias on the leader board.

The 39-year-old Spaniard twice has won the Bob Hope British Classic--which is not, trust us, played in a desert--and has endured two recent eye operations for a detached retina. Anyone who asks this golfer what his handicap is does not know the half of it.

Nakajima, 31, wears spectacles while he plays, and he had a devilish time keeping them from fogging Saturday. He said he had never played a round under worse conditions.

An excellent player who has won four tournaments in Japan this year alone and 34 in all, Nakajima in international events is best known for two 1978 disasters: a 13 at the 13th hole of Augusta National in the Masters, and a 9 at the 17th hole of St. Andrews at the British Open. At the latter, he was on the green in 2, then watched in horror as his putt zoomed past the cup, off the green and into a bunker. It took him four shots to get it back out.

He faced another calamity Saturday when he hit his second shot at the 12th hole to the base of a grassy slope near Turnberry’s monument to fallen World War I soldiers, the course having been a British air base. Totally blind to the green, Nakajima took a sand wedge and flew the ball over the hill. It landed 15 feet from the pin, and he sank the putt.

“This is unbelievable,” he said, using his favorite English phrase, as he described the shot by arcing a flattened palm over his head.

A superstar in golf-mad Japan, Nakajima said through his translator that he is “fully aware that this is one of the greatest tournaments in the world. As a child, I saw many pictures of the Open, and I am going to give it everything I have got.”

Later, away from the interpreter, Nakajima was asked if as a young golfer he had a particular hero.

“He-ro?” he asked?

“Yes. Someone you admired. A Ben Hogan or someone like that,” it was said to him.

“Oh. He-ro,” Nakajima said. “Hmmm. Jack Nicklaus.”