THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, July 9, 1994 TAG: 9407090358
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: A-B NOTES
SOURCE: BY STEVE CARLSON AND RICH RADFORD, STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: WILLIAMSBURG LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
Only three men have won two U.S. Opens in the last 20 years, and two of them are at the Anheuser-Busch Golf Classic this week.
Host pro Curtis Strange is the better known of the two. The other one is talking about golf this weekend rather than teeing it up.
Andy North, who has three career victories including Open titles in 1978 and 1985, is working as an on-course commentator for ESPN.
Hale Irwin is the third player with two Open victories to his credit in the last 20 years, and also had a third title 21 years ago.
Unlike Irwin's, North's competitive career has all but ground to a halt. He's played in five events this year, missing three cuts and withdrawing from another event. Last year he played in four tournaments and missed three cuts.
He would like to play more, but his body has turned his career into a series of unplayable lies. North's medical resume includes knee surgeries, bone spurs in an elbow, neck problems, a shoulder injury and four operations to remove skin cancer from his nose and left cheek.
But his vocal chords have remained unencumbered.
``It's fun,'' North said of the duty he happened into late in 1992 when Gary Koch couldn't work a tournament because of a broken ankle. ``We have a great time and we have good people working with us.''
North, 44, is signed on with ESPN through 1996 and said he'll work 20 of the 28 golf events the network covers this year. He said talking about golf is the easy part of the job, but it has been hard to adjust to the technical parts of the broadcast and learning how to talk coherently on the air while a director is talking in your ear.
``Every day you mess up and they give you grief,'' North said.
DAY WATCH: Glen Day, who is three strokes off the lead, heads into the weekend for the second consecutive weekend in contention. Last week at the Western Open he was 5-under heading into the weekend, three shots behind leader Nick Price. But Day ballooned to rounds of 75 and 74 Saturday and Sunday and finished tied for tied for 45th.
``I played bad last week on the weekend, and at other times I've played real good in that position,'' Day said. ``I worried too much last week that I had to shoot five or six under.''
STRANGE SIGHTING: Curtis Strange, who is 10 shots off the lead, wasn't talkative for the second consecutive day after Friday's round of 69, scurrying off in a cart. Maybe the penalty he called on himself at the third hole bothered him.
After he addressed a putt, he saw his ball move in a gust of wind. The one-stroke penalty negated what would have been a birdie at the par-5.
``I just didn't play very well,'' Strange said. ``I never hit it close enough to the hole to make 'em. I'm just not hitting the ball very well.''
LANNY'S EAR: Richmond's Lanny Wadkins missed the cut and is going to skip the British Open next week. Wadkins said he's been bothered by an ear infection, has had a couple of prescriptions that haven't helped and the ear bothers him when he flies.
``I'm a little out of whack and not playing well,'' Wadkins said. ``I don't feel like paying $18,000 to go over there and play like (crud), to be quite honest with you. If I didn't have a bad ear and I was playing like this I still wouldn't go.''
CHIP SHOTS: If Davis Love III could only make a putt. The long-hitting Love leads the Anheuser-Busch in greens hit in regulation at an 86.1 percent clip. Love is at 5-under for the tournament, eight shots off the lead. . . . How much did Bob Lohr mull over his sparkling 61 Thursday after he left the course? ``I didn't think about it too much,'' he said. ``I was really into that O.J. Simpson trial on TV.'' by CNB