Tewell Becomes the Birdie Man of Riviera

The PGA Tour record for consecutive birdies is eight, by Bob Goalby in the 1961 St. Petersburg Open and Fuzzy Zoeller in the 1976 Quad Cities Open.

Doug Tewell made six in a row Saturday on the first six holes of the Riviera Country Club, annually selected as one of the country’s most difficult courses.

“Six in a row at Riviera ought to match eight in a row somewhere else,” a smiling Tewell said after finishing with a five-under-par 66 and a one-shot lead at 207 after 54 holes of the 60th Los Angeles Open.

The birdie binge put him a shot ahead of Willie Wood and defending champion Lanny Wadkins, who both had 67s, and Dennis Trixler, who had a par 71.

Tewell, Wood and Wadkins played in the same threesome and among them had a remarkable best ball of 16 under par.

“We had a string going for the first 14 holes, and when I missed my birdie on 15, I apologized to the guys,” Wadkins said. “It was kind of contagious. Doug had six in a row, and then Willie and I started to pitch in. You could feel the momentum.”

The same threesome will be together today in the final group at 11 a.m., with another large gallery anticipated. L.A. Junior Chamber officials announced the attendance Saturday as 27,600.

Clarence Rose, like Wood and Trixler a non-winner on the tour, also shot a 66 and stood alone in fifth place at 209.

Grouped at 210 were Fred Couples, who had the day’s third 66; Barry Jaeckel (67), a home-club favorite who represented Riviera when he won the Southern California Amateur in 1968; Tom Kite (70), Lennie Clements (71), Jim Colbert (71) and Antonio Cerda (69), an Argentine now living in Mexico.

Mac O’Grady, the halfway leader with a pair of 68s, had seven bogeys that dropped him to 75 and 211. Tied with O’Grady were former L.A. Open winner Johnny Miller (69), Masahiro Kuramoto (70), Mark Lye (73) and a pair of former UCLA teammates, Corey Pavin (69) and Jay Delsing (71).

Kuramoto won the Tokyo Bridgestone tournament, a sister event to the L.A. Open, to earn his way into the tournament here. Wadkins, in 1979, became the only player to win the two events in the same year.

Tewell, whose only tournament wins were in 1980--the Sea Pines Heritage and the Philadelphia tournament--is no stranger to low scores. Last year in the PGA at Cherry Hills, he shot a course-record 64 in the first round.

The six-birdie streak started off rather uneventfully with a two-putt birdie from 18 feet on No. 1, a 506-yard, par-5 hole that Tewell reached with a driver and a 1-iron. The excitement mounted:

No. 2 (467-yard, par-4)--Driver, 4-iron, 1-foot putt.

No. 3 (441-yard, par-4)--Driver into the right rough, 3-iron, 8-foot putt.

No. 4 (238-yard, par-3)--3-wood, 25-foot putt. “I was just trying to get the ball close. It was downhill to the right and the ball had eyes.”

No. 5 (430-yard, par-4)--Driver, 5-iron, 20-foot putt. “It was the best putt I hit all day. If it had missed, Lanny (Wadkins) said it would have rolled six feet by the hole. I could have dropped 20 balls right there and not made any of them.”

No. 6 (174-yard, par-3)--6-iron, 15-foot putt.

The string ended at No. 7 when he finally made a bad shot, and it cost him a bogey.

“Let me say, the sleeping giant called Riviera came awake,” Tewell said. “I hit a bad second shot that landed in the bunker and I missed a little putt that would have saved par.”

On the back nine, Tewell had two birdies and two bogeys, including No. 12 (416-yard, par-4) that he bogeyed for the third day in a row.

Trixler, a one-time Fresno State golfer who entered 30 tournaments last year and made only $12,207, would have shared the lead with Tewell but for his Achilles’ heel--No. 18. He bogeyed the 454-yard, par-4 finishing hole for the third time.

“I’ll get it back tomorrow,” the good-natured Trixler said. “I’ll get my par there when I need it most, on the last day.”

Saturday he took three putts from the fringe.

“There was a lot of mud on the ball and I thought it would slow it down, but it didn’t. It was kind of a shaky putt and I missed about an eight-footer coming back that hung out on the right.”

Trixler, who battled back Friday after losing three strokes to par in the first seven holes to shoot even par, was pleased with his performance.

“I’ve never been in a situation like this, up with the leaders in a PGA event,” he said. “I’ve led on the mini-tour, but that’s about it. I want to play the same way tomorrow, to play a solid game, and when the round is over I’ll look around and see where I finished.”

Trixler’s big hole was No. 5, where he rolled a 50-foot putt across the green and into the hole for a birdie.

Wood, like Tewell a product of Oklahoma State, had a remarkable string of his own. He made five birdies in six holes to fly out of the pack to the top of the leader board.

“I expected to win my first tournament last year, and it didn’t happen,” Wood said. “I was disappointed. I expect it to come soon. I played too well last year not to win.”

Wood, one of the country’s finest junior players in the late ‘70s, missed the cut in only 3 of 30 tournaments last year and won $153,706 in his second year on tour. But the closest he came to winning was a second in the Anheuser-Busch tournament.

“Maybe it won’t be this week, maybe it will, but it will be soon,” he said confidently.

Two of this year’s four tournaments have had first-time winners, Donnie Hammond at the Hope and Bob Tway at San Diego, a trend Wood would like to see continue.

“I’m thrilled to death to see all the new faces out here,” Wood said. “There are a lot of underdogs coming up, and everybody loves to root for the underdog.”

One of the underdogs, O’Grady, found Riviera in a mean mood after he had criticized it Friday. O’Grady, the ambidextrous pro who hits right-handed and putts left-handed, was a caddy at Riviera when he was a teen-ager but said, “it isn’t the same course today it was then, it’s like an aged widow with wrinkled skin, a shell of its former self.”

The aged widow put seven bogeys on his scorecard, three in a row on the front nine and four in a row on the back nine. They came from a variety of reasons--lipped putts, three-putt greens, weak chips and iron shots that didn’t find Riviera’s tiny greens.

This is the second week in a row that O’Grady has led after 36 holes only to falter in the third round. Last week, in the Hawaiian Open, he shot 74-72 the last two days to finish tied for 16th.

O’Grady had a word of warning for his fellow competitors, however.

“If the greens were honest and true, Lanny Wadkins would win,” he said.

Each day, as the sun and the wind help smooth out the bumps and pock marks left from last week’s rains, the greens are getting more honest.

Wadkins hasn’t won since last October and he’s eight under par for his last 27 holes, which means he’s on his game, so O’Grady’s prediction may be on target.

Even Wadkins thinks so.

“I like the course, I’ve won here twice and I feel pretty good about tomorrow,” he warned.