U.S. OPEN GOLF CHAMPIONSHIP : Watson and Wiebe Lead the Open, but Jack Is Not Far Back

Never mind that Mark Wiebe went out there in his white turtleneck, shot a 67 and took a hunk of the U.S. Open’s second-round lead. Never mind that Jim Thorpe went out there with that messed-up hand of his, shot a 68 and wound up one stroke behind. Never mind that Mister Masters, Larry Mize, shot a 68 and kept a glimmer or two about a Grand Slam.

That’s not what’s interesting.

This is what’s interesting:

Tom Watson is the co-leader.

And Jack Nicklaus is one stroke back.

Tom is back. Jack is back. Alert the pack. Somebody phone Arnie. Tell him anything is possible. Tell him Watson shot a five-under-par 65 Friday on the second day of theU.S. Open golf tournament at the Olympic Club. Tell him Nicklaus shot a 68. Tell Palmer to point his Lear jet toward San Francisco, rent a car from O. J. Simpson and high-tail it over here.

“I don’t think there’s been any doubt that I would be back,” said Watson, who hasn’t won a tournament since the 1984 Western Open. “It’s just been a matter of when.”

“I knew the two of us would be playing somewhere on Saturday. I just didn’t know where ,” said Nicklaus, who hasn’t won anything except the 1986 Masters in three years. “I thought I was playing terrible, and he was playing worse.”

All the Greg Normans and Seve Ballesteroses of the world seemed to be playing great. They were supposed to leave Watson and Nicklaus eating their sand. It was supposed to be a Clint Eastwood movie: The Good, The Terrible and the Worse.

But Watson and Nicklaus, a couple of American originals, are doing OK for themselves. It must be the major tournaments that bring out the best and the beast in them. Their finest finishes all year came in the Masters, where Watson tied for seventh place, Nicklaus for eighth. Beyond that, they didn’t make enough money this year to cover their valet parking.

So, go ahead, call Arnie. Palmer lost the 1966 U.S. Open at Olympic, even though he led by seven shots with nine holes to play. If these two guys can make a comeback, so can he.

Watson now shares the Open lead with Wiebe--pronounced “We-be”--at 137, three under par, as a couple of redheads from nearby colleges show that there might be something to home-course advantage. Watson went to Stanford, Wiebe to San Jose State. They know this layout better than most.

A five-way tie for second place includes Nicklaus, Thorpe, Bernhard Langer, Tommy Nakajima and John Cook. Right behind, at 139, are Ben Crenshaw, the first-round leader; Mize, the Masters champion; Simpson, not O. J. but Scott, both of whom went to USC; and Eastwood, not Clint but Bob, another San Jose State man, whose 66 was one of Friday’s 23 par-busting rounds.

The scores here are getting low, lower, lowest. Sub-70 rounds Friday came from sources far less likely than Watson and Nicklaus. They came from people like Russ Cochran, a left-hander from Paducah, Ky., and Duffy Waldorf, the UCLA man from Tarzana, and even Ed Dougherty of Linwood, Pa., who finished his round so late, he practically needed a flashlight to find his ball. Too bad there wasn’t a candlestick in the whole park.

Scott Simpson, meanwhile, was not the only USC guy out there tearing things up. Tony Sills, who used to retrieve balls at the Los Angeles Country Club driving range to make a buck, shot a 70. And Sam Randolph had a 69 in the bag, only to lose two strokes for delay of game. If not for the penalty, Randolph would be three shots behind the leaders.

Although Watson and Nicklaus were fine and dandy, respectively, it wasn’t exactly Old Timers week. Six former Open champions--Hubert Green, Hale Irwin, Larry Nelson, Andy North, Lee Trevino and Fuzzy Zoeller--were among those who missed the 36-hole cut.

And just because a golfer was hot stuff did not mean he could handle the chilly weather here. Paul Azinger, the tour’s leading money winner, also missed the cut, as did Payne Stewart, the pre-tournament favorite of many to be the leading American. Olympic did give some people trouble.

Not Watson, though. Not Friday, anyway. He made a putt of close to 50 feet on the third hole, and long ones at the ninth and 11th as well. He bogeyed the 17th and still got a 65, only one stroke off the course record of 64 set by Rives McBee during the 1966 Open.

How long had it been since he had put together such a round? Could he even remember?

“The last time I shot 65? No, I don’t,” Watson said. “Must have been a long time ago.”

Actually, he carded a 64 at last year’s Colonial. But just to show how erratic his game has been, two days prior to that 64, Watson shot a 78. His putting had gone to heck, and his confidence was not what it used to be.

On Wednesday, he and Nicklaus played a misery-loves-company practice round together. Nicklaus, 47, during the course of it, said, “Ah, just let me be 22 again for a week.” Before Watson, 37, could agree, Bruce Edwards, Watson’s caddy, said: “A week? How about just for four days?”

Running into Watson after Friday’s round, Nicklaus slapped him on the back and said: “We’ve got to practice together more often.”

While Watson’s game was not, as Nicklaus had said, terrible, it definitely was semi-terrible. “You feel like you’re playing up a hill, and you’re on sand,” was how he likened it. “What happened to me? Well, I could say ‘drugs,’ I could say ‘getting divorced,’ there’s all sorts of things I could say, but you really can’t pinpoint it.” Neither drugs nor divorce, for the record, have ever been discussed in the Watson household.

When Watson, too, said he would like to be 22 again, he was asked if it was to improve his state of mind.

“State of body,” he said. “You could do the things you used to do. Better touch. Better nerves.”

That’s all it takes. That, and a little luck. That 50-foot putt he sank, if it hadn’t hit the cup, it would have express-trained 10 to 15 feet past. And, Watson’s final putt of the day, on the 18th, lipped around and around before dropping.

Watson certainly did not expect to shoot so well, considering the state of his game and the state of the course. “When we had that dry, windy weather, I thought the scores would be a lot higher,” he said. “I misjudged the golf course. The winning score will be under par. I’d be surprised if it’s any lower than four to five shots under, but it’ll definitely be under.”

Wiebe, the co-leader, is a preppie with long red hair who, when he went to Escondido High School, would be told by his coaches to get a haircut, and would defy them by letting it grow longer. “I was sort of a semi-rebeller,” he said. “Now, my wife won’t let me grow it any longer than this.”

Wiebe, 29, also admits that he is “not a guy who wears golf clothes,” which explains the trendy Le Coq Sportif sweat shirt with the Australian Rules Football logo on the back. Fuzzy Zoeller says Wiebe dresses like Richie Rich, the millionaire comic-book kid.

He certainly looked good Friday, making five birdies and an eagle. Wiebe holed out a 114-yard wedge shot for the eagle at the par-4 12th, after missing an eagle putt on No. 1 by an inch. It was a roller coaster round that included three straight bogeys on the front nine.

That was nothing, though, compared to Mac O’Grady’s round. Mad Mac’s wacky 69, which left him three shots off the pace after having him in the lead for a while, included an eagle, four birdies, three bogeys and one double bogey.

“One minute, you have total volition and willpower. Next minute, you can’t tie your own shoelaces,” said O’Grady, who always has something unusual to say.

O’Grady is bunched at 140 with Cochran, Dougherty, Masashi Ozaki, Lennie Clements and Craig Stadler, who quietly played into contention. Greg Norman and defending champion Ray Floyd are among those at 141.

Jim Thorpe, who has a habit of playing his best golf in this tournament, sank birdie putts of 30 and 18 feet on the back nine en route to his 68, not bad considering that he had just had a cortisone shot in his left hand, the one that hurt him so much at last week’s Westchester, N.Y., tour stop that he walked off the course.

Thorpe, a gun enthusiast, originally injured the hand firing a .44 Magnum during target practice. He, too, evidently thinks he is an an Eastwood movie.

Open Notes So many players survived the cut that they might have to play today in threesomes, not twosomes. Everyone within 10 shots of the lead automatically made it. . . . Dave Barr, like Corey Pavin a day earlier, withdrew with back problems. . . . Mark Wiebe is not only one of the leaders, he is low guest columnist. Wiebe is doing a daily column in the San Jose Mercury News, with Johnny Miller in the San Francisco Examiner and Roger Maltbie in the San Francisco Chronicle. . . . In his last 15 tournaments, Jim Thorpe missed the cut six times, withdrew twice and did not show up once.