Tournament Players Championship : Beck and Kite Take Command After Lietzke, McCumber Falter

For someone who had just missed a tap-in putt of one inch and had four-putted a hole, Mark McCumber was relatively calm and upbeat.

His double-bogey five on the par-three 17th hole in the Tournament Players Championship at Sawgrass Saturday cost him a chance for the outright lead.

Instead, it was left to Chip Beck to take the lead from Bruce Lietzke on another warm and somewhat windy afternoon in Florida.

Lietzke was breezing along after nine holes with a four-stroke lead, but he shot a 41 on the backside to finish with a 74.

His lapse opened the door for Beck and Tom Kite, who took over the top two positions on the leader board, setting up a scramble for the championship today.

Beck shot a 68 for a three-day total of 207 and the lead at nine under par for 54 holes, while the steady Kite shot a 68 and was one stroke back at 208.

Five players--Lietzke, McCumber, Gary Koch, Ben Crenshaw and Fred Couples--were bunched at 209. Greg Norman and Gil Morgan are next at 210.

Jack Nicklaus and Craig Stadler have an outside chance of winning today. Both are four strokes behind the leader.

McCumber, the defending champion and the home favorite since he lives in nearby Jacksonville, should have been devastated, but he wasn’t.

On the 17th, a green completely surrounded by water, McCumber’s tee shot stopped 25-feet from the pin.

“I hit the hole on my first putt and I thought I had made a two, but it spun out five feet past the cup,” McCumber said. “It looked as if I was going to be 10 under par.”

Then, the nightmare began.

McCumber said he just burned the hole on his second putt, the ball sliding an inch past.

McCumber reached out with his putter and tapped the ball, but it moved only a quarter of an inch.

“I was ready to reach down and take the ball out of the cup,” McCumber said. “I couldn’t believe it.”

McCumber said he wasn’t frustrated after just barely missing his five-foot putt, although it seemed that he made a half-hearted stab at the ball.

“I know I hit it,” he said, “but I didn’t do it out of anger.”

“It wasn’t a tragedy. It was just an unfortunate situation. Overall, I’m extremely satisfied with the way I played and I’m looking forward to defending my championship tomorrow.”

Since he is only two strokes behind Beck, he has good reason to believe that he can put the four-putt green behind him. But will others let him forget it?

“I’m taking my phone off the hook tonight,” McCumber said.

McCumber still managed to shoot a two-under-par 70 on a day when the course didn’t yield many low scores.

Lietzke, the easy-going pro from Dallas who had a two-stroke lead at the outset of Saturday’s third round, took his faltering back nine in stride.

“I lost my concentration after I three-putted the 10th hole,” he said, “Then, I tried to coach myself.”

That turned out to be a mistake as he got off to a shaky start on the par-five, 529-yard 11th hole by topping his 3-wood and sending the ball into the water.

Lietzke wound up with a double bogey on the hole. He bogeyed two more holes on the backside after getting three birdies on the front nine.

“I hadn’t missed a putt inside of 10 feet for 2 1/2 rounds, so I felt vulnerable again,” hesaid.

However, he was philosophical about losing a substantial lead.

“If you have to have a train wreck, Saturday is a good day to do it,” he said. “There’s a lot more golf to play, and I can’t let nine holes get in my way.”

Beck said he was surprised to be leading, adding, though, that his confidence has steadily improved each day.

“It’s going to be a great shootout tomorrow, a great championship,” said Beck, who hasn’t made much of an impact on the Tour this year after earning $926,817 to finish second on the money winning list in 1988.

Beck made a bogey at the second hole, but then played steadily the rest of the way, collecting five birdies.

Kite, who won last week at Orlando, Fla., in a sudden-death playoff with Davis Love III, is in the hunt to become a back-to-back winner, emulating Steve Jones, who won the first Tour events of the season, the Tournament of Champions and the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic.

As for Nicklaus, he said he is going into today’s round with the positive attitude of shooting a low score.

“After I got a bogey on the 10th hole, I said I’m going to cost this course four birdies,” Nicklaus said.

He proceeded to get them with a fine round of 68.