Kite opens a two shot lead

If Tom Kite wasn't proud of his play in the third round of the Tradition, he couldn't help but like his effort.

"I was leaking oil out there pretty badly," he said after barely bettering par and still opening a two-shot lead over Andy North today. "I was pleased with the way I hung in there. I was really pleased with the way I fought hard."

No one but North lit up the exacting Cochise Course at Desert Mountain, where a thunderstorm interrupted play for the second straight day.

But Kite, who started one stroke behind Larry Nelson, fared as well as most.

He took the lead for good with a spectacular blast out of a trap that set up a birdie putt on No. 12, made five straight pars and birdied the last hole for a 1-under-par 71 and a 54-hole total of 208.

"It's so nice to get in contention," said Kite, a first-year player on the 50-and-over circuit who hasn't won since the 1993 Los Angeles Open. "You know, that's the thing - the way I've played poorly the last couple years - that I've missed so much."

North, an ESPN golf analyst who chose to make his tour debut at the year's first Senior PGA major, had five birdies in an error-free round of 67 to quietly move into contention for his first solo win in 15 years.

"I think it's kind of neat when no one is paying attention to you," he said.

Nelson was 8-under to start but shot 75 to fall back to third at 211.

The day's outcome set up a final threesome of U.S. Open winners - Kite, who won it in 1992, Nelson (1983) and North (1978, 1985).

Jim Ahern, who led the first round, shot a wildly up-and-down 72, allowing Bruce Summerhays (71) and Tom Watson (70) to catch him at 212 - four shots off Kite's pace.

Joe Inman and Ed Dougherty were at 213, a shot ahead of Bruce Fleisher, a two-time winner this year, and defending champion Graham Marsh, who won the only 36-hole Tradition ever played after snowstorms wiped out two rounds last year.

Saturday's lightning-and-rain delay was 1 hour, 7 minutes, compared with nearly four hours of play suspensions Friday that forced 21 players to complete the second round early Saturday before starting the third.

Kite and Nelson were among them.

Nelson, who completed 15 holes the day before, had a par-bogey-birdie finish for 136 at the midpoint. Kite was tied with him but started off with two bogeys before a par and then his first birdie of the day on No. 18 - going 1-over in his last four holes.

The third round went Kite's way from the start - he birdied the first hole, and Nelson bogeyed.

Nelson got a share of the lead again when Kite bogeyed No. 6, but Kite regained sole possession when he dropped an approach shot 3 feet from the cup on No. 8 and made the birdie putt. On the next hole, Nelson bogeyed when he two-putted from 18 feet, and Kite got his only two-shot lead.

But he gave it back with bogeys on the 10th and 11th holes, salvaging a tie only because Nelson bogeyed No. 10.

On the 12th hole, a 523-yard par-5, Kite was 233 yards from the green and gambled, hitting a 3-wood into a bunker just below the green. After a minute of grinding his feet into the sand to make sure of his stance, he sent his third shot to within 4 feet of the flagstick for the go-ahead birdie attempt.

"I played a nice shot up there and ended up in the greenside bunker with an easy up and down," Kite said. "So that was a nice turning point in the round and, you know, really helped steady the ship a little bit."

While Kite, Nelson and Ahern were battling among themselves, North was quietly shooting a superb round that belied his lack of experience and underlined how well he is playing - his only competitive golf this year was teaming up with Jim Colbert to win the Legends of Golf, an unofficial event.

North made a 60-foot birdie putt on the third hole, rolled in 15-, 12- and 10-foot birdie putts on the sixth, eighth and 13th holes, respectively, and earned second place with his only short putt of the day - a 6-footer - on the final hole.

"I didn't really hit the ball very well the first two rounds," he said. "Then today I started hitting it a little bit better, put it in the fairway more often and hit a few more greens. If you go out there and not make a bogey, that's a pretty good round."

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