Masters Notes : Patch Has One Shark Too Many

Greg Norman is known as the Great White Shark. But it was a tiny red shark that caused a stir Saturday at the Masters.

That’s the one that Norman’s caddy, Pete Bender, sewed to the back of his uniform before the round began.

“It’s a man-eater,” Bender said. “Doesn’t it look nasty and mean? We had to come out fighting.

“The galleries loved it. They were yelling, ‘Jaws, Jaws.’ ”

Masters officials, however, didn’t love it. They have strict rules about the caddies’ uniforms.

“I guess you could say they were a little rude to me,” Bender said. “They came up (after the round) and said I couldn’t wear the patch.

“I checked the caddies’ guide. It doesn’t say anything about not being able to wear a patch. But this is the Masters, stuffy.

“It’ll be in my pocket tomorrow.”

As the contenders came through the press room after their rounds Saturday, most of them couldn’t say enough about what it would mean to them to win the Masters.

Not Seve Ballesteros, who won here in 1980 and 1983.

“I’ve won two times,” he said. “If I have a chance to win another, that’s nice. If not, that’s OK.

“If you’ve won the Masters, you can come back every year. So I’m not in a hurry to win again. I’ll have other chances.”

Ben Crenshaw was watching on television in the press room when Curtis Strange lined up his 12-foot birdie putt on No. 16. If he had made it, he would have moved back into a tie with Crenshaw for the lead.

Instead, Strange’s putt just missed the hole and rolled 40 feet past to the other side of the green.

“See what can happen,” Crenshaw said. “You’ve got to be so careful on these greens.”

Then Strange almost holed the putt for a par.

“That would have been the most amazing two-putt ever,” Crenshaw said.

Strange bogeyed the hole, to fall two under par, which is where he finished the third round.

“There are times when this golf course can really embarrass you,” Strange said. “That wasn’t the golf course’s fault. It was my fault.

“You feel silly when you’ve got a 12-foot putt and end up putting from 40 feet.”

Masters Notes

A record payoff to the winner was announced. This year, the Masters champion will earn $162,000, or $18,000 more than Jack Nicklaus hauled in after winning in 1986. The tournament has become so lucrative that a golfer can take home a five-figure paycheck just by placing 22nd--$10,100. . . . To date, the claim to fame here for Mark McCumber, who is five shots off the lead, was his conking of a spectator with a shot at last year’s Masters. The gallery member was rushed to the hospital after McCumber’s tee shot hit him in the head. “But he was all right,” McCumber learned later. “Turned out he was a hard-headed Scotsman, same as me.” . . . Corey Pavin’s 81, which put him 11 strokes off the pace after a promising 71-71 start, did not feature any 13s or penalties for kneeling on towels or anything like that. He just came undone on the eighth hole, with a double-bogey 6, and at the 12th, with a double-bogey 5, and never recovered. Pavin birdied the final whole and still ended up with 41 for the back nine. . . . The model of consistency so far: Kenny Knox, 75-75-75. . . . The only amateur to survive the cut, Robert C. Lewis Jr. of Warren, Ohio, faded to 79 Saturday. His round included three 6s and a 7. He is now tied at 230 with Mac O’Grady, who put a 79 on the board for the second straight day. . . . T.C. Chen said the pressure of contending in a major tournament doesn’t bother him. “If there’s one thing I learned, it was don’t look at the scoreboard,” he said. That lesson came hard, when Chen led throughout most of the 1985 U.S. Open at Oakland Hills near Detroit, only to blow the tournament near the end with an assortment of bad shots that included a double-chip--striking the ball twice with the same swing. Chen, 28, has played well this year, winning the Los Angeles Open, beating Ben Crenshaw in a playoff. He now trails Crenshaw by two shots at the Masters.