Seeing Too Much of a Course on Thursday Could Make Things Rough on Sunday : Lauer Wants to Start the Way She Finishes

Bonnie Lauer caught the other women pros off guard when she shot a two-under-par in the first round of last year’s Uniden LPGA Invitational at Costa Mesa.

“But it’s Thursday, “ they protested.

Lauer usually spends Thursdays enjoying the scenery, often from places on the course no contender should be. For Lauer, the first round is little more than a practice round and, she says, “I don’t really care for practice rounds. Practice rounds are boring. I just want to get on with it.”

So when she jumped into the lead so quickly a year ago, her wire-to-wire win was almost inevitable. Lauer invariably scores better on Sunday than on Thursday, which--no coincidence--is the day they pass out the checks. She ranked 16th with $110,829 in winnings last year.

“She’s not a good practice player,” caddy Sarasota Larry Gallagher said last week as Lauer prepared for her ’86 debut by spraying the ball around the Arizona Biltmore Country Club in a practice round before the Samaritan Turquoise tournament. “Normally, her strength is that she doesn’t hit off line much.”

Lauer’s first three rounds in the Samaritan are 74, 73, 77--just a tuneup, she hoped, for the Uniden this week.

“I talked to Larry about it,” Lauer said. “When the bell goes off, we’re fine, but (in practice) he doesn’t caddy as well, and I don’t play as well. I guess it’s a little lack of interest, knowing you can drop another golf ball. You’re intense enough for the four days.

“We’re going to work on really getting prepared for Thursday. Larry figured that last year, if I had shot 72 or 73 in the first round, I would have made over $200,000. At Rochester, I shot 79, 69, 68, 68. And I birdied the last hole to shoot the 79. I went from looking at the flight guide to get of town Friday night to looking at the leaderboard on Sunday.”

Despite the 79, she finished third, four strokes behind Nancy Lopez and two behind Pat Bradley, and she could have won some other tournaments by playing as well on the first day as she did on the last. It’s like living life on third-and-long, or with two out and nobody on base.

“Playing like that, your next goal is just to make the cut,” said Lauer, 35.

With her rare fast start at Costa Mesa a year ago--she went 70, 71, 68, 68--she finished at 11-under-par 277 for a five-stroke victory.

“It seems if I’ve gotten into contention, I was really interested,” Lauer said. “I’ve got to be as interested on Thursday as I am on Sunday.”

Her best finish each of the last two years has been in the Uniden at the Mesa Verde Country Club, where the $330,000 tournament starts, uh, Thursday. She tied for third in 1984 and--same story--would have forced a playoff with Lopez if she had shot as well in the first round (74) as she did in the last (70).

“I’ve always liked the golf course,” Lauer said. “When my game is on, it’s real suitable to me. Usually, I drive the ball accurately. I’m not one of the longest hitters, but long enough on that course.

“I like fast greens, too, and those are as fast as any we play. Putting the two together and doing fairly well in between, it makes for a real good week for me.”

There must be a two-fold plot on the women’s tour: (a) keep Nancy Lopez with her expanding family and (b) let Bonnie Lauer sleep.

That makes it easier on everybody else.

Lopez was one mean mama when she stormed back from her first pregnancy. She won two of 16 tournaments, including the Uniden, in ’84 and then five in ’85. She won a record $416,472 last year. But she’ll miss most of this season for the birth of her second child, due late in May.

Lauer said Lopez’s absence doesn’t make much of a difference.

“Maybe it’s more so for the media,” she said. “She brings out more people, but the first person I have to beat is me, and there are too many other good players to worry about. It’s such a personal struggle. Everybody’s dealing with themselves.

“Our tour’s real healthy. A lot of people are capable of winning every week. Even what Nancy did last year I wouldn’t call dominating the tour. It’s not a Martina Navratilova type of thing.”

The Uniden will be Lauer’s second tournament of the season. She skipped the three in Florida, following her schedule of the previous two years when she stayed home in Palm Desert and met the tour in Arizona.

“I’m anxious to get started,” she said. “The last two years when I didn’t go to Florida, once was right after my hand surgery and I had a lot of things to work on. And last year I redecorated my house and had some other things going on.”

Three years ago, Lauer, the LPGA Rookie of the Year in ‘76, had surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome (a nerve disorder) on both hands. She missed the early part of the ’83 tour, but it was a turning point in her career. The time off to allow her hands to heal let her get a grip on things.

“I didn’t realize a lot of things until I was out with the hand problem and was forced to be away from it,” she said. “I put so much pressure on myself trying to get out of my slump that when I didn’t have to play, it was a relief.

“I wasn’t enjoying it at all. Somewhere in the back of my mind I felt I needed to get away from it, but I wouldn’t let myself do it because that would be quitting. So I just kept grinding and grinding. I was taking my golf swing apart, and there was nothing wrong with my swing. I’d just totally destroyed any confidence that I once had.

“I related too closely to my golf game: How I played golf was how I felt about myself. The game is hard enough without going out there and feeling like if I don’t play well, I’ll hate myself and everybody else will hate me. Gee, I shot 80 and no one is going to want to have dinner with me. You get into a stretch of not playing well and lose your perspective on things.

“If I had a bad day I’d know I was going to have a bad week. I’d be just on the borderline of making the cut and think, ‘Don’t bogey it . . . don’t do this, don’t do that,’ and the minute I thought about it, it happened.”

She never considered giving up golf. Her alternative probably would have been to teach. She earned a degree in education, cum laude, from Michigan State in ’73.

“I realized that was a mistake in my second week of student teaching,” she said. “I couldn’t get a job teaching when I got out of school, plus you make about $8,000 a year.

“The thing that got me into teaching to begin with is it gave me the summer off. Then I realized I couldn’t make enough money to play golf all summer. I came out west to put myself in a climate where I could play golf 12 months a year and see if that’s what I wanted to do.”

While recuperating from the surgery, Lauer discovered a book, “The Miracle of Sports Psychology” by Jim Bennett of Seattle.

“I read the book and some of the things hit home,” she said.

Now Lauer listens to Bennett’s tapes and talks to him by phone once a week. She still doesn’t practice as much as some other pros, and she is somewhat frustrated that she can’t do a lot of conditioning work.

“Because of my hands, I can’t stand out there and hit a lot of golf balls during the week,” she said. “I’ve learned that isn’t to my benefit, anyway. I couldn’t lift a club the next day. I work on what I need to work on.

“I used to run a little, but that used to bother my back. Last winter I was at a Nautilus thing and the upper body machinery started to bother my hands. So then I just did the leg machines and I hurt my knees. I said, ‘I don’t think I’m supposed to be doing this.’ I did a little yoga this winter (for) stretching and flexibility.

“You have to be careful with some of the strength-building things. If you start to shorten or tighten any of these (arm) muscles, I think it’s going to affect the swing--not that that’s a good enough excuse for not doing it. Racquetball I would love to do, but I can’t do it with my hands.

“That’s another reason why I try to take that month or six weeks away from it, to give my hands another chance. I think the break does ‘em some good, and it does me some good mentally.”

Lauer has won only two tournaments in her 12-year career, but her game has been on the upswing the last two years.

Lest she get carried away with her new-found confidence, however, she reminds herself of something her tour pal Hollis Stacy said.

“Just when you think you’ve got it,” Lauer repeated, “you’ve had it.”