Tournament of Champions : Peete Making Up for Last Year at La Costa

Calvin Peete came to the MONY Tournament of Champions figuring that he owed La Costa fans four days of good golf. Maybe even five.

Peete won Tuesday’s pro-amateur with a 64, eight under par, then came right back Wednesday with a 68, good for a share of the first-round lead with Mark McCumber in the $500,000 tournament.

“After what happened last year, I felt obligated to play well,” said Peete, 42.

Inexplicably, Peete made like a hockey player with his ball on the fifth hole during the first round last year. After he had hit his moving ball several times, neither he nor playing partner Curtis Strange could figure out how many strokes he took. Since he had no official score, PGA official Glenn Tait disqualified him.

“This is the best start I’ve ever had at the beginning of the year and it’s the best start I ever had in a Tournament of Champions,” Peete said after Wednesday’s round. “I felt good after working on my game the past three weeks and I showed good patience after I made two bogeys early in the day.

“Usually when a season’s over, I toss my clubs in the garage and forget about golf until after New Year’s Day,” he said. “This year, I worked hard during the off-season. I think having the Tournament of Champions as the opening tournament was an added incentive to be ready.”

After bogeying two of the first five holes on the front nine, Peete had a four-under-par 32 on the tough incoming nine. He had also had four birdies on the back nine Tuesday.

No other player among 1985’s 31 tournament winners had better than a 34 on the second nine holes.

Peete birdied the 447-yard, par-four No. 10 by hitting his second shot, a 3-wood, 18 feet from the cup and sinking the putt. He got the other three birdies on putts of 2, 3 and 5 feet.

“I also got a spiritual lift from the Rev. Jesse Jackson this morning,” he said.

Jackson had breakfast at La Costa with Peete, Jim Thorpe and Lee Elder.

Elder also responded well, shooting a 69 for a one-stroke lead over Miller Barber in the seniors tournament being played in conjunction with the Tournament of Champions. Barber appeared to be in command when he was five under par after 11 holes, but bogeyed three of the last four holes.

Arnold Palmer, who won the Tournament of Champions twice before he became a senior citizen, shot a par 72 and is in third place among the elders.

On a picture-postcard day warmed by Santa Ana winds off the desert, 17 players bettered par. Six more, amateur Scott Verplank among them, matched it.

The seniors hit from the same tees on 10 of the 18 holes. The difference on the others made the course play about 120 yards shorter than the 6,911 yards the regulars played.

McCumber, who finished second here last year, birdied the last hole to pull even with Peete.

“The first day of the first tournament is like the first day of school,” McCumber said. “I’ve been going to the first day for eight years, but I always approach it with the same apprehension I had when I was in school. You wonder what it’s going to be like and who’ll be in your class.”

McCumber must have liked what he saw because he reeled off birdies on the first two holes and then picked up another on the fourth.

At 69, only one shot behind Peete and McCumber in the chase for the $90,000 winner’s purse, are defending champion Tom Kite and West Germany’s Bernhard Langer, named 1985 world player of the year by Golf Digest.

Langer won tournaments on four continents last year--the German Open, Australian Masters, Panasonic European Open, the Million Dollar Challenge in South Africa and the Masters and Sea Pines tournament in the United States.

“I didn’t feel like I was swinging the club too good, although I did drive the ball exceptionally well,” Langer said. “I had not played since Dec. 10 so I didn’t expect much.”

Kite made only three birdies but saved his 69 with remarkable recoveries to save pars. The most exciting was on No. 12, a 520-yard par-five, where he drove into the rough. His 4-wood second shot hit a tree and fell into a bunker. He hit out with a 6-iron, then followed with an 8-iron to the green, 20 feet from the pin. He holed the putt for a par.

British Open champion Sandy Lyle of Scotland had the lowest front-nine score, a four-under-par 32, but lost his edge by hitting the wrong ball--a two-stroke penalty--on the 10th hole.

After hitting his drive into the short rough, Lyle hit what he thought was his ball. It turned out to be a stray. The proper ball was located later, a few feet farther into the rough. The penalty apparently shook up the easy-going Lyle and he took three putts from 10 feet to compound his problem.

He wound up with a quadruple-bogey-8 on the hole but then rallied with three successive birdies for a two-under-par 70.