THE MASTERS : Suddenly, This Unknown Is a Rather Popular Guy

Thursday afternoon, just after he had shot a 70 to take his place among the leaders of the tournament, the Masters press officers brought a player named Tom Lehman to the interview room.

He seemed a pleasant-enough fellow. Nice smile. Balding on top. Friendly sort. Looked a little bit like a school bus driver.

But the interview room quickly emptied when he sat down. Reporters rushed to their phones. They had more important news to bring to the waiting world.

You see, Lehman was following Greg Norman and Corey Pavin to the room, and those were hard acts to follow. There was standing room only when they were there--an overflow really for Norman.

Lehman was no Norman. Norman is the sport’s “Great White Shark,” an international celebrity, a man who has won two British Opens and dozens of other tournaments and is generally conceded to be the best player on the planet these days.

Tom Lehman couldn’t match that glamour. Tom Lehman has never won a PGA Tour event. He wasn’t the Great-White-Anything. Only a corporal’s guard of media types hung around for his interview. They didn’t know what to ask him. One guy actually said, “Tom who?”

Well, Tom Who almost makes Who’s Who as of Saturday night at the Masters. The Great White Nothing beat the Great White Shark by six shots on Saturday’s round to lead the Masters going into the final round with a one-shot lead over Jose Maria Olazabal--and a six-shot lead over Norman and some of the other big names of the game.

When he came in for an interview Saturday, the room was packed. The guys fought to get in their questions.

Who is this upstart who dares to rout the flower of world golf, who challenges the course where Hogan, Nicklaus and Palmer ruled, the citadel of American golf, whose proudest boast is that it has never been won by a Tom Lehman but has always been taken by the royalty of the game?

Well, first of all, he’s a religious man. He’s probably the first guy ever to lead the Masters going into Sunday who will spend Sunday morning giving a sermon. He’s a dues-paying member of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.

A preacher leading the Masters? A guy who struggled for three years on the tour, then didn’t even qualify to play from 1986-91?

That’s not the Masters. That’s one of those other tournaments. “Unknown wins Masters” is not in standing type like other major tournaments. No Tom Who has ever won it. Tom Watson, probably. You don’t win the Masters unless you know every blade of grass at Augusta and which way the greens break and when to lay up and when to go for it. It takes, conservatively four years for a guy to even survive this hall of horrors, never mind lead it.

Take a look at it. It’s diabolical. It’s like the innocent-appearing choirboy who ends up an ax murderer.

There’s not a spot of rough on it. Sometimes, U.S. Open courses are all rough. The only way to get a bad lie at the Masters is behind a tree. It’s so innocent-looking, you want to give it a lollipop.

The Masters has these deceptively benign greens. They look like grass but putt like glass. They have slopes. Example: On Thursday, on the ninth hole, Arnold Palmer hit a ball only a couple of yards short of the green. Arnold chose to putt it. He had about 40 feet. The putt ran up 35 feet, stopped, and began to roll backward like a runaway truck on the Grapevine. It came to rest five yards behind where Arnold had initially putted it. He was putting for birdie on his third shot--and chipping for a par on his fourth shot. In a sense, he had hit the ball backward.

That’s Augusta. It’s not a course, it’s a torture chamber. After three holes on it, you’d confess to anything.

Look at what it does to the marquee players. Payne Stewart, who won a U.S. Open and a PGA, shoots 78-78. Hale Irwin won three U.S. Opens, but he shoots a 79 Saturday. Only three players broke 70 the first day, only six the second and only two the third. Sandy Lyle, a former winner, shoots a 78 the third round, John Daly shoots a 77. So does another former winner, Ian Woosnam.

In the midst of this shot and shell stands the unlikely figure of Tom Lehman, Bible and putter in hand, faith in place. Lehman was so bad, he lost his tour card--which he had worked years to get-- in mid-career, so discouraged that he weighed taking a coaching job at the University of Minnesota. He thought at least he could go to Florida and golf in the winter, but the school said he’d have to run the ski-rental shop. Tom went back to his golf clubs.

Lehman doesn’t know what the fuss is all about. After all, he has played the Dakotas’ tour, the Carolina tour, the South Africa. He won four times on the Hogan Tour, which is a satellite tour for the luckless players who could not get their tour card at the qualifying tournament. “Of course, that’s not quite the Masters,” concedes Lehman.

Of course, the Masters may look like a faithless trollop to some elite players. But to Lehman, she’s been almost flirtatious. Last year, in his first trip to Augusta, he ended up tied for third.

Hardly anybody noticed.

They noticed this week. He was on television more than David Letterman. And, when he came to the press interview room Saturday night, you would have thought it was a Streisand concert.

Some great players have been trying all their lives to win the Masters--Greg Norman, Tom Kite, Lee Trevino, among them.

To make the Masters your first tournament victory is like winning a lottery with your first ticket.

Of course, the old girl hasn’t thrown her hand in yet. She has led people on before. Eventually, she turns to her tried and true swains, the ones who know her moods. She hates to be taken for granted. She’ll hit you over the head with an 80. She drowned a shark Saturday. Lehman could go back to being What’s His Name again by tonight if he takes too many liberties.