THE MASTERS GOLF TOURNAMENT : Lyle Is Tickled With His Lead of Two Strokes

It was a great day for golf and for Sandy Lyle Friday at Augusta National, where the uncommonly hot Scot took a two-stroke lead and also discovered a cure for the common cold.

Lyle, this year’s leading money-winner, shot a five-under-par 67 when the wind slowed down, the greens sped up and the afternoon sun got the course about as warm as it was under Fuzzy Zoeller’s collar.

Last week, Lyle won at Greensboro, N.C., his second victory this year, and that means that with a 138 score halfway through the tournament, he only has to stay in front for 36 more holes to become the first Scot to win the Masters.

“I might create a record, yes,?” he asked.

Lyle, who holds a two-shot edge over Mark Calcavecchia, has been bothered by a stuffy nose, but his game was a picture of health Friday, mainly because he felt better.

The reason for this, Lyle said, was his girlfriend, Jolande Huurman, a sports therapist, who cleared his stuffy nose by rubbing his feet.

“She’s been tickling my feet,” Lyle said. “It’s cleared my nose straightaway.”

Will miracles of modern medicine never cease? Lyle now becomes the first player to lead the Masters by two feet.

Calcavecchia, whose 69 moved him into second place in his second Masters, said his wife, Sheryl, does not tickle his feet.

“But with Sandy Lyle playing like he is playing, she’s going to start tomorrow,” Calcavecchia said.

Four shots behind Lyle in a tie for third place were Zoeller and Gary Hallberg. As it is with Lyle, the situation with Zoeller is also a little ticklish.

Zoeller shot a 66, then really teed off. He aimed several more well-placed shots at the condition of the greens, which he roundly criticized.

“It’s a joke out there,” Zoeller said. “It’s not even any fun.”

The Augusta National greens are not only fast, they are also extremely hard, which makes stopping the ball on them very difficult as well as unfair, Zoeller said.

“As hard as they are and as fast as they are, it’s total war,” he said. “Now if that’s golf, I’m in the wrong damn league.”

Some of his colleagues are no longer in the game. A total of 46 players did not make the cut, including Ian Woosnam, Jay Haas, Andy Bean, Scott Simpson, Paul Azinger, Keith Clearwater and Arnold Palmer.

Larry Nelson, the first-round co-leader at 69, came back with a 78 and trailed Lyle by nine shots.

There were still 15 players within seven shots of Lyle. Tom Watson and Bernhard Langer were in a group of five who were five strokes off the pace, joining Fred Couples, Chip Beck and Don Pooley.

Hubert Green and Robert Wrenn were next at 144. Wrenn, the first-round co-leader with Nelson, slumped to a 75.

The greens were a hot topic of conversation after Friday’s round. And while everyone found them difficult, no one was as quite as outspoken in his condemnation of them as Zoeller.

The similes were coming fast anyway: “Like concrete,” said Hallberg after his 69. “Hard as a rock,” said Couples after his 68. “Like Gooney Golf,” Calcavecchia said.

Like doesn’t anybody here know how to play this game, said Watson after his 71?

“I disagree with Fuzzy Zoeller,” Watson said. “The greens are what a major championship is all about. The greens are perfect. We nit-pick the golf course. We’re not playing a golf course that’s impossible when a man can shoot 67 or 66. This golf course identifies the best players.”

For 36 holes, that player has been Sandy Lyle. The 1985 British Open champion began badly with a bogey, but birdied four holes on the front nine by sinking putts from distances of 1 foot, 12 feet, 5 feet and 4 feet.

He made two more birdies the rest of the way, one of them on the par-5 13th, a severe dogleg left that measures 465 yards from the tee to the cup. His second shot was a 4-iron that left him just off the edge of the green. Lyle chipped to within a foot of the hole and made the birdie putt.

Lyle’s key was to keep the ball below the hole and putt uphill. That way, Lyle reasoned, he lessened his chances of the ball rolling too far past the hole, which happened often on downhill putts.

Lyle stopped short of blasting the condition of the greens and chose instead to call them a good test of golf.

“It’s just something you have to put up with,” he said. “But there is a fine line between being very, very hard and being ridiculous.”

Couples was four under par after 13 holes, but he bogeyed three of the last five and that kept him from improving his score of 68. He said the greens were the fastest he had ever played.

“I couldn’t hit the ball soft enough,” Couples said.

If the greens were fast, Hallberg wanted to be slow. He wanted to be conservative, to make sure of everything, so he said he drove to the course slowly, ate slowly and tried to play slowly.

Then when he got to the greens, it was all different. “They’re like this table top,” Hallberg said, rapping his knuckles on the table in front of him. “Then add some heel marks. The greens are crusty. They need some water. They’re not greens, they’re browns now.”

So put it all together. What is putting on those greens like?

“It’s like putting on a pool table with potato chips,” Hallberg said.

There are some familiar names still in the hunt. Two-time Masters champion Seve Ballesteros shot a 72 for a 145 and was tied with two other former winners, Ben Crenshaw and Craig Stadler. Mark McNulty and Gary Koch were in that group, too.

Jack Nicklaus, the six-time Masters champion, was 10 shots off the pace after a 73.

Curtis Strange, last year’s leading money winner, had a hole-in-one on his way to a 70 and was only eight shots behind Lyle. Strange’s hole-in-one was on the 155-yard 12th hole and he used a 7-iron.

It was the first Masters hole-in-one in 16 years, since Charles Coody got one at the 16th in 1972, and it was the 11th hole-in-one in 52 Masters tournaments.

Perhaps the most up-and-down round of the day was turned in by Langer, the 1985 champion. Langer had an eagle, a double bogey, five birdies and five bogeys in his round to wind up right where he began the day, one under par.