Women Look to Conquer Mesa Verde : The Par Search Is On as LPGA Tournament Starts With Pro-Am

Par was made to be broken, or so goes the creed of the professional golfer.

No course is too hilly or too spacious or too crowded by water and sand hazards. Par is out there, looming, hanging like a carrot from a string, and no self-respecting owner of a tour card will ever admit to being less than . . . er, up to par.

This is why the Mesa Verde Country Club course at Costa Mesa remains a humbling experience for members of the Ladies Professional Golf Assn. Five times during the past decade, the LPGA circuit has stopped at Mesa Verde and five times, par remained unscathed.

The best players in the sport have tried their hand here and not one has been able to do more than battle the course to a standoff. Not Nancy Lopez, who won two Mesa Verde tournaments, including last year’s. Not Pat Bradley. Not Patty Sheehan. Not JoAnne Carner.

Not anybody.

That, however, could change this week as 144 players get ready to confront Mesa Verde again in the $330,000 Uniden Invitational Tournament, which gets under way Thursday. Why? Because par has changed.

The course remains the same, with its super-slick greens and demanding fairways. But on Hole No. 10, Mesa Verde’s toughest, par has been raised a stroke, from four shots to five.

That means par for 18 holes of golf is now 72. Par for the four-day tournament is 288, increased from 284.

And for players, that means the conquest of Mesa Verde is finally within reach.

“By changing the 10th hole, it will probably mean half a stroke (off the field’s average score),” Sheehan says. “Few people have been able to reach it in four. Now, you’ll probably see a lot of birdies . . . and quite a few pars.”

Raising par is often seen as the golfing equivalent to bringing in the outfield fences for a weak-hitting baseball team. If you can’t reach the wall, bring the wall to you.

But at par-72, Mesa Verde will still never be mistaken as a golfer’s paradise. If anything, Hole No. 10 was crying for a par increase.

It’s a 451-yarder, requiring a straight drive from an elevated tee over a hidden water hazard and then a long iron on the second shot. The green is sloped and tricky, difficult to approach from the right.

According to an LPGA list of the Top 100 Holes on the Tour, Hole No. 10 at Mesa Verde ranked third overall in 1984--just behind Holes No.’s 13 and 1 at the Corning Country Club in New York. Only 12 golfers birdied the hole last year, with 253 failing to reach par.

So, now, five on 10 has made this taxing course at least semi-manageable. Barring rain--and there could be some of that this week--history may be in the offing.

Par at Mesa Verde may finally be broken.

And just who might be the first to record this achievement?

Some of the top candidates:

Lopez: She equaled par last year (284) to win the tournament and actually says she enjoys the course. “It’s one of my favorites,” Lopez said. “I like this type of course. It’s a long-hitter’s course, with fast greens, and I’ve always felt I was a pretty good putter.” En route to the 1984 title, Lopez tied the course 18-hole record by shooting a third round of 66.

Sheehan: She was a runner-up last week at Phoenix and the early LPGA point leader in 1985. Sheehan has had her problems at Mesa Verde--”It’s a bear,” she says--but she’s an aggressive player who drives well. Those attributes make her a threat.

Bradley: Among the tour’s most consistent players, Bradley always ranks among the year-end prize money winners and usually enters a tournament’s final round among the contenders. Nothing changes for her when the circuit stops at Mesa Verde, either. She won the 1981 Kemper Open here and placed second to Lopez last year.

Betsy King: The LPGA Player of the Year after winning three tournaments in 1984, King placed second at last month’s Tucson Open. A third-place finisher at Mesa Verde in 1984, King calls the course “a good test--it’s probably the toughest course we play all year.”

Julie Inkster: One of the tour’s most promising talents, she was named Rookie of the Year in 1983 and won the Dinah Shore in 1984.

They and the rest of the field will begin their quest--call it Par Search--Thursday, when the first round begins. Two days of practice rounds have been completed, with the final pre-tournament event, the Pro-Am tournament, scheduled to start this morning.

The tournament will run through Sunday, with the final round to be televised nationally by ESPN and locally by KTLA.