GOLF / SHARK SHOOTOUT : Uncoupled Floyd Sure Can Pick a Partner

The way Raymond Floyd tells it, he was on the practice putting green at the U.S. Open last summer when Fred Couples delivered some bad news of the financial variety.

Couples had been Floyd’s partner in the Franklin Funds Shark Shootout for the last three years, including the time the pair won the lucrative event in 1990.

Couples was going to play in Japan this year, however. So Floyd told tournament host Greg Norman he needed a new partner.

OK, find one, Norman said.

“I’d like to play with him,” Floyd said, pointing to Australia’s Steve Elkington, who was putting nearby.

The fast partnership has set the pace through 36 holes at Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks. Elkington and Floyd shot a near-perfect, eight-under 64 in Saturday’s alternate-shot portion of the tournament to give them a two-stroke lead at 18-under 126 with one round to play.

Today’s final round, which begins at 7 a.m., will feature a scramble format. Each player will hit tee shots, then each will hit from the spot of the best shot until the hole is completed.

Floyd and Elkington, the first-round co-leaders, started fast with birdies on the first three holes and five of the first seven.

Floyd tapped in putts of 18 and 24 inches for birdies on the first two holes. The pair missed only one green in regulation, on the par-three eighth, yet still saved par.

“The key for us was that we put absolutely no pressure on each other except for the eighth,” said Elkington, 30. “We did exactly as planned.”

Hale Irwin and Bruce Lietzke didn’t stray from their game plan, either. They shot 65 and are two shots off the lead. They will be paired with Floyd and Elkington today.

“It was mostly my doing,” Lietzke said, his tongue in cheek. “What I’m doing is riding a player as hard as I can.”

And it was a wild ride at times. Irwin made a spectacular birdie at the par-four sixth. Facing a 40-foot bunker shot off a severe downslope, Irwin knocked it in for birdie. Lietzke called it the best sand shot he had seen in “two or three years,” and this time, he wasn’t kidding. But they also bogeyed two holes.

Irwin predicted that today’s wide-open scramble format could result in a “birdie-or-better,” pace on every hole.

“I think it’ll take 60 or better to win it,” Floyd said.

First-round co-leaders Mark Calcavecchia and Brad Faxon both hit into the water on the par-four fourth, took a bogey and played the front nine in only one under. They rallied to finish at 68, leaving them four shots behind Floyd and Elkington.

Mark O’Meara and Curtis Strange, who won the Shootout in 1989, birdied the first three holes and five of the first six to finish with a 65, leaving them three shots off the lead.

Norman and partner Nick Price still couldn’t get out of low gear. The pair, who combined to win more than $2.8 million on the PGA Tour this season, fired a three-under 69 that left them ninth in the 10-team field.

Defending champions Tom Kite and Davis Love III, one shot off the lead when play began, struggled home at 70, tying for high round of the day.