Sunday, September 17, 2000
Nelson leads Kroger after late surge
Morgan trails by 1, Green by 2
By John Erardi
The Cincinnati Enquirer
MASON — Larry Nelson woke up the ghosts Saturday and fired a 64, birdieing four of the last five holes to take a one-stroke lead on Gil Morgan (69) going into today's final round of the Kroger Senior Classic.
After two rounds, Nelson is at 134 and Morgan at 135.
The ghosts Nelson awakened were the birdie ghosts of Thursday, when he fired a phenomenal 58 (one eagle and 10 birdies) in a pro-am.
“It was much more difficult to shoot 64 (Saturday) than it was to shoot 58 Thursday, because of the conditions (windy) and the greens were a lot firmer,” said Nelson, who is No. 2 on the senior money list and making a run at senior tour “player of the year.”
“It was more of a “thinking” game today,” Nelson said.
The thinking man's game is Nelson's bread-and-butter: he won two PGA Championships and one U.S. Open on the regular PGA Tour.
Two back of Nelson is Hubert Green, who shot a 70. “It was a boring round,” he said. “One birdie, one bogey.”
It should make for a great finish today, and not only between Nelson, Morgan and Green. At 137, only three strokes behind Nelson are John Mahaffey, Allen Doyle, Bruce Summerhays and senior-tour leading money winner Bruce Fleisher.
The 15-mile-per-hour wind — gusting to 25 at times — continued to wreak havoc with shots, such as at No. 15, where Nelson thought his 88-yard shot would be downwind, but it turned out to be into the wind.
He flipped a wedge nice and high into the air, expecting to see it take off like a para-sailer jumping off a mountain, but just the opposite happened: the wind blew back landed 10 yards short of the green. He took 3 shots to get down, for his only bogey of the back nine.
He shot 31 on the back, compared to 29 on the back during his 58.
After his run of birdies at the end of the round, Nelson was “wishing there were more holes to play.”
Morgan was wishing the opposite: he bogeyed three of the final five holes, including the par-5 18th hole, when he tried to hit a 3 wood to the ball beneath his feet. He squibbed it out, and fortunate to make bogey.
He looked like he might run away with the tournament when he eagled the fourth hole and birdied five and six — to take a three-stroke lead on the field at minus 8 — but he couldn't keep it going. He parred No. 6 through No. 13, before the wheels started falling off.
Morgan's caddy kicked the beverage stand after coming off the 18th hole. He was upset that he didn't talk Morgan into laying up. But, clearly, Morgan wanted to go into today's round a stroke up on Nelson.
That's what makes this fun.
What also made it fun was that the wind was almost as tough Saturday as it was Friday. One problem was that the greens weren't uniform in firmness, Morgan said, so one never knew exactly what kind of shot to hit into them.
No. 16, the picturesque par 3 over water, wasn't the challenge it was Friday, when there were no birdies. There were 8 Saturday, and Nelson had one of them. He hit a 4-iron to 18 feet below the hole and sunk it.
On No. 17, his sand-wedge approach landed five feet above the hole and he nailed it. On No. 18, he was thinking he might have hit a miracle 2 on the par-5 when he hit his 4-wood right on the screws, but it ran by the hole into the back fringe.
“All I wanted to do there was get it close — I was afraid if I chipped it and it came out (hot) and run 10-12 feet by — so I figured if I putted it I could get it to two or three feet, and that's what I did,” Nelson said.
Today's weather forecast is for the wind to be blowing in a southwesterly direction, the opposite of what it was blowing Saturday.
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