1986 Open Championship - Sharkive - Sharkwatch

In the early afternoon of the third day a nuclear submarine nosed quietly along the shore line of Turnberry Bay. Someone playfully remarked that it had come to spirit away the Americans while no one was looking. But no rubber dinghies were seen paddling out and soon the submarine changed its bearing, heading southwest by west towards Ailsa Craig. Then it dived into the grey depths of the Firth of Clyde. It was the best place for it. A brisk southerly wind was springing up, the sky darkening and with it a strong suggestion of rain to follow that which had fallen for a time before lunch. All morning the traffic had been lined up nose-to-tail from Ayr to the north and Girvan to the south, but the crowds had come well prepared, wise to a British summer. Anoraks, waterproofs and umbrellas were going to be as essential to watching as patience was going to be to the golfers.

The scoreboard told its own story. All day only one player beat 70 and that was Ho Ming Chung, of Taiwan, who had a 69. As he was out at ten minutes to nine, he was done and finished long before the leaders had even started, fortunate to have had what reasonable weather there was going. Reasonable was a word he would hardly have chosen. Ho found it "very cold and miserable out there," particularly towards the end when he dropped shots at the sixteenth and eighteenth to see a potential 67 disappear. That too was to set a pattern. Whereas on Thursday in the first round the wind had helped down the closing holes, now it hindered. The seventeenth, which had averaged 4.36 on the first day and 4.35 on the second, shot up to 5.06. And there were no eagles as compared to the ten in the previous two rounds. Conversely the seventh, which is played in the opposite direction, dropped to an average of 4.60. Scores had to be made going out, salvaged coming home.

For all that, this third round was to prove marginally the easier day, as compared to Thursday, though not of course Friday. Four players this time matched par, Ian Woosnam again being one of them, which indicated his competitiveness when pitting himself against the elements. Others came from Sandy Lyle, the defending champion, Danny Edwards of America, Manuel Pinero from Spain, and David Graham, the widely experienced Australian.

Others of course fared less well, the most notable victim being Greg Norman, whose two-stroke lead at the end of the second round twice advanced to five on the way to the turn but, at the end of the day, had dwindled to only one. When within sight of making his first major championship a foregone conclusion, the big Australian had taken 40 to come home.

Tsuneyuki (Tommy) Nakajima, followed by an army of Japanese photographers, was on the other hand home in a highly adventurous 37 for a 71 and thereby lodged himself right on the heels of the leader. Moreover the championship was now wide open. Woosnam's 70 meant that he was now equal third instead of sixth and only three strokes behind, alongside Gordon J. Brand, who had lost a stroke on Norman with a 75.

Also still in touch were Nick Faldo (76), Jose Maria Canizares (73) and the American Gary Koch (72), all sharing fifth place six strokes adrift, but less room for manoeuver from Graham, Sam Torrance (71), Raymond Floyd (73) and Bernhard Langer (76). With seven strokes to make up, something clearly exceptional was going to be needed as well as a further collapse from Norman.

Among those who were definitely out of it were Jack Nicklaus, whose 76 left him hopelessly placed at now seventeen over par and sixteen strokes behind Norman, Tom Watson (77 for 225), Seve Ballesteros (73 for 224) and Lyle (70 for 221), though the latter had very nearly got himself back into contention in defence of his title.

Lyle's opening rounds of 78 and 73 were hardly propitious, but when he went out in 34 and then continued steadily down the difficult homeward stretch, he began to have visions of a 68 or even perhaps a 67 which would, he felt, have given him the chance of getting up into the top four or five, if not quite winning.

He was certainly one of the few players strong enough to get close enough to the seventeenth green for the birdie he knew he needed, but it was this hole that finished him. His drive did not quite hold up in the wind and it pitched on the steep bank to the left of the fairway. Moreover, it found a ghastly lie in the now wet and clinging grass, against the grain. Not even his great strength could move the ball more than two feet.

Lyle's next went further, but it scooted across the fairway into more thick rough and he could only get another wedge to that recovery. His fifth shot had to be played with as much as a six iron and even that missed the green, going into the rough once again. From there he managed to get down in two, but his seven was altogether too much to bear.

Perhaps the most significant aspect of Norman's round was not so much that he twice failed to build on a lead of five strokes but that he kept smiling even when he could not stop the bleeding,lI which is one of the ways the professionals have of d-escribing a succession of bogeys. It revealed an inner conndence jn hjrnseJf and a beJjef that in the end all would be well.

For a time it had looked even better than that. Norman began boldly with a perfect one iron to split the opening fairway, a five iron to ten feet and a putt which just caught the edge of the hole before dropping. Better was to follow. Only one of his pars through the next three holes needed the help of a single putt and then came a second birdie with an outrageous putt from the very edge of the green at the fifth. Two under par, five ahead of the field, the Australian was once again on the march.

At once he tripped. Downwind, the sixth was playing only a five iron against a one iron on the first day. But Norman may have struck the shot a shade too easily, came off it and in it went into the deep bunker on the right. From there he came out very short, which was excusable from beneath the deep face, and then putted short, which was not. His putt for a four missed and one wondered if the pressure was not getting to him again.

Norman rode this double bogey implacably. A three wood and five iron was enough to get him home in two at the 528-yards seventh for a birdie and then came another at the next where an immense drive left him with only a wedge to the green. His putt for a three was nevertheless substantial. Five ahead once again.

It was then that the tide, in golfing terms, began to turn. In his next ten holes, Norman had six bogeys and five pars. He was hanging on, but only just. At the ninth he was in the left rough from the tee and he could not get home in two. At the tenth he was through the green. At the twelfth he needed two drivers and was in the rough again. At the fourteenth his four iron second found more rough. At the sixteenth he drove into a bunker and had no chance of getting across the bum. And finally, at the eighteenth, not even two driver shots were long enough to reach the green in now drenching rain. Everyone of them ugly fives.

"The difficulty of the rain was that you could not see," ,said Norman later, his hair still plastered flat by the downpour. "It was coming down horizontally and every time I looked up to see where I was going, it hit you in the face and stung. At the ninth and tenth I pulled the trigger too soon. Getting prepared to hit was the difficulty."

A caddie at such times is essential. Even so Norman's hands slipped on the club twice, once at the twelfth and again at the fourteenth. His thoughts were centred on simply getting back in and not hurting himself with a triple or even quadruple bogey. The whole of this inward half had been played in rain and as Norman came up the last fairway he was hardly conscious of this even being the Open Championship. "Nearly everyone had gone," he said. No one could blame them.

Bearing in mind the glasses he has to wear, Nakajima's 71 was the bravest of efforts, particularly under the pressure he must have felt as a Japanese golfer, though not the first, within sight of a major championship. He did it moreover despite a six at the sixteenth. Here he found the fairway with his drive, but now it needed not a pitch to the green but a two iron to clear the bum. Even that was not enough. His ball rolled back down the bank from where he had to pick out under penalty and then took three more to hole out.

It was for all that a scrambling round, particularly coming home when the Japanese had no less than five single putts. Two holes stood out as an example of his ability to get something out of nothing. There may have been no more wild shot all week than Nakajima's four iron at the twelfth, careering right and coming to rest in thick rough on the wrong side of the hill that is topped by a war memorial.

He had no sight of the green at all but, with one huge heave, Nakajima somehow propelled the ball up and over the mound and on to the green. It was the most audacious of strokes and then he capped it all by holing a putt ofa good five yards for his par four.

Later, having been in trouble off the tee at the seventeenth, Nakajima needed as much as a three wood for his third but struck it as clean as a whistle through the wind and rain to twenty-five feet and again holed the putt, this time for a birdie. Marvellous stuff indeed, further capped with another retrieve at the last where his pitch from the rough was beautifully judged to catch the mound and bring his ball back to within five feet of the hole.

Other pars had been saved at the tenth and thirteenth and for someone who admitted to feeling very excited, no one surely conquered their nerves better. As a child, Nakajima had seen pictures of the Open. Now he was right in the thick of it, with the whole of Japan, he knew, urging him on.

Woosnam, of stocky build, is well equipped for bad weather. What helped, he said, was that the two-ball play at least kept everybody moving at a good pace and he was able therefore to keep warm. His only wait was on the eighteenth and furthermore, he got through the last four holes in one under par.

His birdie had come at the fifteenth where a one iron came to rest only two feet from the flag. There was a pitch and single putt to save par at the sixteenth, but on the seventeenth and eighteenth the little Welshman played perfectly with two putts in each case. No one else played with such resolution over this stretch when the elements were at their most demanding.

The one hole that really hurt Woosnam was the thirteenth. Another foot to the left and he would have missed the bunker off the tee. As it was he was in the sand, came out but then hit a five iron over the back of the green and took three more to get down for a six. There then followed a five at the fourteenth and those three dropped strokes undid the birdies he had had at the sixth, seventh and tenth.

Even so Woosnam was delighted with his position and it bothered him not at all if the wind were to continue to blow on the last day. European golfers are as a whole more used to it than Americans, he remarked.

Gordon J. Brand suffered most of his damage around the middle of the course. He took three putts for a five at the fifth and, like Norman, his partner, was in the bunker short and right at the sixth. This cost him a four against the Australian's five.

Despite finding another bunker at the seventh, Brand still managed a birdie, but he could not find the green at either the ninth or tenth, which proved costly. When he did hit the green at the short eleventh, he then threeputted. This was a bad run but the unassuming Yorkshireman rallied with a whole string of pars through to the eighteenth, thanks to some solid holing out and yielded only at the last after pushing his drive.

Of the Americans, Koch got himself into the most challenging position with a 72 for a share of fifth place. He has become a great supporter of the Open and loves the challenge of a British links, quite undeterred by the vagaries of the weather.

Golf, he believes, has become too automatic in the States where everything is done by yardages, or tends to be. In Britain clubbing takes on a whole new dimension according to the wind and, like Nicklaus and Watson before him, he enjoys having to use his brain rather than referring to map references.

Another American who might just have got himself into the picture was D.A. Weibring. His 76 included an eight at the eighteenth. Here he pulled a two-iron second into the rough and got such a bad lie that his attempted recovery with a sand wedge succeeded only in driving the ball even deeper into the long grass. Another attempt advanced him, he swore, no more than an inch and then he shanked. How easily they can all add up. Furthermore, the same hole had cost him a six in the second round.

If this put Weibring out of the championship, Raymond Floyd admitted that his chances of winning the two Opens in the same year were gone too. The U.S. champion had a 73 and no luck at all. He twice missed short putts while four others looked in all the way, but still stayed out. He felt that he had played well but got absolutely nothing out of it.

Briefly, little Manuel Pinero looked as if he could get into the thick of the fight, particularly when he went through the turn in 32. He had thoughts then of a 66, which would have meant one more birdie. It came at the seventeenth but what he had not bargained for were the bogeys he had at the twelfth and fourteenth and a double-bogey six at the sixteenth. He took three putts at the fourteenth when going for a birdie and another three at the sixteenth. But the damage here was more a four iron second short and left into the rough. He was in two minds over the shot and in the end fell between the two stools.

The high hopes that rested on Faldo and Langer tended to fade with their 76s and it was therefore Woosnam and the elder Brand who took the greatest expectation of another home victory into the last round. But everything, no one needed telling, was going to depend on Norman. Once again the promised land was beckoning.

Writers Renton Laidlaw Norman Mair Alister Nicol Donald Steel Michael Willams Mark Watson	Photographers Lawrence Levy Brian Morgan
	Editor Bev Norwood