Blackwelder Gets a Tip and Leads With a 68

Myra Blackwelder had an inkling that this might be a good week when her 10-week-old baby, Myles Stuart, didn’t cry on their eight-hour flight from Florida.

Then her husband, Worth, gave her some advice moments before she teed off Thursday in the opening round of the Nabisco-Dinah Shore women’s pro golf tournament.

“Remember what Rollie Massimino told his Villanova team before the Georgetown game,” he said, referring to the NCAA basketball final. “ ‘There’s no reason to walk on the court unless you think you can win.’ ”

Blackwelder, playing in only her second tournament since the baby was born in January, shot a 68, four under par, on a day when the sun was even hotter than her putter. That was one stroke better than any of the 103 other professionals and three amateurs could score over Mission Hills’ 6,275-yard course.

Patty Sheehan, the LPGA champion, was six under par after 13 holes before she bogeyed three of the last five to put her in a three-way tie at 69 with Australian Jane Crafter and Judy Clark, both non-winners on the tour.

Alice Miller, who was tied with Blackwelder before making a double bogey on the 487-yard, par-five 18th hole, shared the 70 slot with Pat Bradley, Muffin Spencer-Devlin, Rosie Jones, Terry Luckhurst, Becky Pearson and Betsy King, last year’s LPGA Player of the Year.

Defending champion Juli Inkster, who will win a $1-million bonus if she can repeat, shot a steady 73 after a slow start and is still very much in contention for the richest prize in women’s golf history.

“I started off a little nervous,” said Inkster, a three-time U.S. Amateur champion who was a tour rookie last year when she beat Bradley in a playoff. “After five holes, I was two over par, but I came back a little. One over par is a good position--providing I can come back tomorrow. I threw a couple of shots away with mistakes that I hope by tomorrow I won’t be making.”

Blackwelder, who played five years on the tour under her maiden name of Myra Van Hoose, made more mistakes than Inkster but recovered from all of them without making a bogey.

“I missed five greens, four of them in bunkers, and was 5 for 5 in getting up and down,” she said, holding her baby during the interview. “I’m really rusty, but my short game was sharp. From the time I left the tour at San Jose last September until I entered the GNA two weeks ago in Glendale, I hadn’t played more than six or seven rounds. I didn’t have any great expectations coming here, but I scrambled around and had a good time.”

Blackwelder got her big break on the final hole, the long par-five with an island green.

“The wind was blowing from right to left (toward the lake), so I hit a 3-wood off the tee to be safe,” she said. “I hooked it, and it looked like the ball was going in the water, but it hit a palm tree and bounced back in the fairway. That was really a lucky break.”

Blackwelder also was able to keep her ball out of the thick rough most of the day. The one time she did drive into the rough, she escaped with par by sinking a seven-foot putt.

“The rough was terrible,” she said, echoing the assessment of nearly every player. “They are so thick, they put such a premium on hitting it straight off the tee.”

Blackwelder rolled in birdie putts of 20 and 30 feet, and two more from shorter distances.

“These greens are so perfect that if you have confidence in reading them and you get the ball rolling, they’ll go in,” she said. “The thing that bothered me the most was the heat. I’m still not completely recuperated from the pregnancy, and my legs got really tired from the heat. It was so hot that when I was standing over a putt, I could feel it baking my skin.”

When Blackwelder was standing on the 13th green, two under par, she looked up at the scoreboard and saw that Sheehan was six under.

“I told my caddy, we’ve got to get kicking, or it’ll be all over,” Blackwelder said. “If Patty gets too far in front, its goodby. I was glad to see her come back to us a little.”

Sheehan had a remarkable streak of six birdies in seven holes, taking turns knocking the pins down with her approaches and rolling in putts from 30 or 40 feet.

“I must have made a couple of miles worth of putts,” Sheehan said. “I only had 25 all day. I got to thinking this was one of those days where nothing can go wrong, but I thought too soon. I just had a lapse, and I have no one to blame but myself.”

Sheehan’s troubles started when she bunkered her tee shot on the par-three 14th hole and couldn’t get up and down to save par. On the next hole, she drove into the trees and had to chip out for another bogey.

On the 170-yard 17th, she again drove into the trees and had to chip twice before reaching the green, where she saved a bogey with one putt.

“I was in the rough five times on this course,” she said. “That’s five times too many. You never know when you swing if the ball’s going to fly or if you’ll hit a clunker.”

Sheehan, who won a $500,000 bonus last year by winning two tournaments in a row, was philosophical about her finish.

“There are two ways to look at it,” she said. “It was disappointing to be six under and finish only three under, but on the other hand it was fortunate I was in a position where I could make three bogeys and still finish three under par. I just kind of limped in.”

JoAnne Carner, who turned 46 Thursday, found the rough rougher than she had hoped it would be. She was in it only once but on that occasion needed two shots to escape and finished at 73 with a group of 18 that also included Inkster and Amy Alcott.

“You can watch it (the ball) slowly sink down until it almost disappears,” Carner said. “It’s so lush you have to stand directly over it to see it. I thought I had a pretty good lie and tried to punch a 6-iron out into the fairway. It just squirted on me and was still in the rough.”

Carner recently became the oldest player to win an LPGA tournament, but when tournament director Dave Marr presented her with a birthday cake after her round, she said: “I don’t believe in having birthday parties after you’re 30, and I’m just over that.”