  Applying heavy-baryon chiral perturbation theory to ordinary muon capture
(OMC) on a proton, we calculate the capture rate and neutron helicity asymmetry
up to next-to-next-to-leading order. For the singlet hyperfine state, we obtain
the capture rate Gamma_0 = 695 sec^{-1} while, for the triplet hyperfine state,
we obtain the capture rate Gamma_1 = 11.9 sec^{-1} and the neutron asymmetry
alpha_1 = 0.93. If the existing formalism is used to relate these atomic
capture rates to Gamma_{liq}, the OMC rate in liquid hydrogen, then Gamma_{liq}
corresponding to our improved values of Gamma_0 and Gamma_1 is found to be
significantly larger than the experimental value, primarily due to the updated
larger value of g_A. We argue that this apparent difficulity may be correlated
to the specious anomaly recently reported for mu^- + p to n + nu_mu + gamma,
and we suggest a possibility to remove these two "problems" simply and
simultaneously by reexamining the molecular physics input that underlies the
conventional analysis of Gamma_{liq}.
