A Pack of Green Coats Chase Curtis Strange

Curtis Strange leads through the first two rounds of the Masters, but he’s not looking back, because virtually everyone who has won the tournament in the last decade is gaining on him.

There are so many players with green jackets in contention that it looks like a St. Patrick’s Day parade.

“I’m in position to win, but I can’t think about that now,” said Strange, who led this tournament by four shots with nine holes remaining in 1985 and lost by two strokes.

“We’ve got a long, tiresome, frustrating 36 holes to go. There’s going to be a lot of good players go up and down that leader board between now and then.”

Strange went up, down and back up the leader board all in one day Friday at Augusta National Golf Club. He made more comebacks than Steve Carlton. He had five birdies, five bogeys, an eagle and seven pars for a two-under-par 70.

That gave him a 36-hole total of 141, three under par, and a one-shot lead over John Cook, Corey Pavin, Larry Mize and Roger Maltbie, who had a 66 Friday for the tournament’s low round. It was 10 strokes better than Maltbie shot in the opening round.

Cook, the first-round leader with a 69, had to birdie the last two holes Friday to salvage a 73.

Then come the Masters’ masters.

In a group of three at 143 were two-time champion Tom Watson and 1985 champion Bernhard Langer.

Another two-time champion, Seve Ballesteros was among a group of four at 144. Ben Crenshaw, the 1984 champion, was at 145. One more shot behind at 146--that’s five shots behind Strange--was six-time champion Jack Nicklaus, the 1986 winner.

Nicklaus, who had a par 72 Friday to go along with his 74 Thursday, was one shot behind where he was at this point last year, but he believes he is in better position in respect to the leaders.

“I’m hitting the ball a little better each day,” he said. “If I get a few putts rolling, I don’t see any reason at all why I shouldn’t move into contention.

“You’ll be surprised to see what a 60-something will do to my position. The only problem is that I’ve got to shoot 60-something.”

As for who can win, Nicklaus said, “In this tournament, anyone who can make the cut.”

The 54 players who were within 10 shots of the lead made the cut. Among those who didn’t were Ray Floyd, Bob Tway, Hal Sutton, Lee Trevino and Arnold Palmer.

There were 25 players who shot par or better Friday, 12 more than Thursday, when the dry weather and high winds combined to make the greens play like concrete and give the players the blues.

The groundskeepers ordered the greens to be watered Thursday night, which benefited the players who had early tee times in particular.

One of those was Maltbie, who birdied three of the first five holes and had only one bogey all day.

“I’d say it was half and half,” he said when asked whether it was his game that had improved or the greens.

“I was five shots better today, and I got five shots not being on the hard, hard, hard greens.”

By the afternoon, the greens were firm again, but, unlike Thursday, the players didn’t have to contend with swirling winds.

“The conditions would have been fairly similar if we had had the same kind of day,” Nicklaus said.

“I was very surprised to walk out there today and find I was playing a different golf course. I lost a lot of opportunities remembering yesterday.”

Said Pavin, the PGA tour’s leading money winner this year: “I don’t think the greens were much softer than they were yesterday.

“But with the wind not blowing hard, it didn’t have a chance to dry out the greens and make them real crusty around the hole.

“The ball didn’t run on and on and on. It just ran on.”

Pavin was the first player to break out of the pack Friday. After starting at one under par, he was five under for the tournament through 11 holes. But he bogeyed three of the next four holes.

“Things didn’t go right on the back nine, but they went right on the front nine,” said Pavin, formerly of UCLA. “So things evened out.”

Strange moved onto the leader board after sinking a 6-iron shot from 185 yards on the fifth hole. He also was five under through No. 13, but he had two bogeys in the final five holes.

“It’s not a round I’m proud of, but I did make five birdies and an eagle,” he said. “That’s the part I should dwell on and not the negatives, which were the five bogeys.

“It’s frustrating out there. The course is tiring, it’s tough, it’s unfair in spots. You know something’s going to happen to you over the course of four days, over the course of one day really. You just have to take the good with the bad. You can’t dwell on it.”

That’s a lesson that also has been learned by Cook, who was four under for the tournament through five holes Friday and then had four straight bogeys.

“When you make four bogeys in a row, you start to wonder about your game a little bit,” said Cook, who is from Rolling Hills. “Believe me, I was wondering.

“After nine holes, I just wanted to walk into the clubhouse and say goodby to everybody.”

But he regained his composure and parred the first seven holes on the back nine before sinking birdie putts on the last two.

Cook said he is comfortable with his position but realizes there is a lot of golf to be played before the finish.

“They don’t call it the Indianapolis 250,” he said. “It’s the 500.”

Taking the yellow flag Friday was Scott Verplank, who went into the lake twice on No. 15 and took a five-over-par 10. He shot his second straight 76 and missed the cut.

A short time later, Japan’s Jumbo Ozaki hit his second shot on 15 into the lake. He took a drop and hit a sand wedge back into the lake. He tried it again with the same result.

Then he hit a sand wedge over the green. By the time he finished three-putting, he had an 11. He finished with an 80 for a 155 total and also missed the cut.

When told later that Verplank had shot 10 on the hole, Ozaki said, “I win.”

Asked to describe his play on the hole, he said, “Jumbo, lake.”

Sayonara, Jumbo.