Purtzer, Wadkins Hold On : Golf: Nicklaus, Norman mount charge, but it falls four shots short in the Shark Shootout.

Jack Nicklaus and Greg Norman put on a brilliant display of golf Sunday, teaming for three eagles and a round of 13-under-par 59.

For their efforts, they got a faceful of second place.

Tom Purtzer and Lanny Wadkins completed a wire-to-wire run and won the $1-million Shark Shootout at the Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks, holding off the charge of Nicklaus and Norman to win the $250,000 first prize.

“Man, they were close,” Wadkins said.

Purtzer and Wadkins shot a nine-under 63 in the scramble format and finished at 27-under 189 in the 54-hole tournament. Nicklaus and Norman closed with a 59 for a 23-under 193 total.

The leaders began the day with a seven-stroke lead over Mark O’Meara and Steve Elkington that everyone agreed on Saturday was all but insurmountable.

But with a surge that inspired a gallery of 5,000, Nicklaus--who designed the course--and Norman--who founded the tournament three years ago--began to chip away at their eight-stroke deficit.

Norman made a six-foot eagle putt on the second hole, and the team carded five birdies over the next seven holes and made the turn with a seven-under 29.

The best was yet to come.

On the par-four, 385-yard 10th hole, the team was briefly only Norman. The Australian cranked a drive of about 290 yards and then lofted a sand wedge shot toward the green. The ball landed 15 feet to the right of the pin, danced wildly with backspin and began a slow roll toward the cup. When it fell in for an eagle, the team was 19-under for the tournament and trailed by four strokes.

And then, on the par-five 11th hole, they struck again, posting another eagle when they played Norman’s drive and five-iron and Nicklaus buried a 12-foot putt.

And quickly, the insurmountable lead of Purtzer and Wadkins was only two strokes and seemed very surmountable.

“They were just behind us, and I could see it and hear it as they closed in on us,” Wadkins said. “I watch the scoreboard all the time anyway, but I did it a lot today.”

Norman, who said after Saturday’s round that there was “no way at all” Purtzer and Wadkins could be overhauled, sensed the kill.

“Those two eagles had us rockin’ and rollin’,” Norman said. “We thought we were going to run them down.

“But then we got sick all over ourselves.”

Norman’s description was in reference to the next hole, the 12th, where the two produced a bogey on the par-three, 188-yard hole, dropping them back to 20-under.

“That’s where we let them go,” Nicklaus said.

Purtzer and Wadkins birdied the 13th hole to move to 25-under, and when Purtzer holed a 60-foot blast from a sand trap on No. 16 for an eagle-three, the hunt was over.

“It was a little tighter than we wanted it to be,” Wadkins said. “But it all ended well.”

Norman and Nicklaus earned $70,000 each for the second-place finish.

Tom Kite and Davis Love III were third, five strokes behind the winners at 194, followed by the teams of Curtis Strange and Billy Andrade and O’Meara and Elkington (195), Ray Floyd and Fred Couples (197), those of Steve Pate and Hale Irwin and Arnold Palmer and Peter Jacobsen (198), Chi Rodriguez and Chip Beck (199) and Ben Crenshaw and Bruce Lietzke (200).

The scramble format, often played by amateurs but seldom by pros, resulted in some startling performances. Strange and Andrade, for example, reeled off a streak of nine consecutive birdies and picked up only three strokes on the leaders.