Bradley Wouldn’t Trade Consistency for More Victories

A pregnant Nancy Lopez is missing from the LPGA tour that moves to Costa Mesa this week, but Pat Bradley pretends not to notice.

“Nancy’s been out before, doing exactly what she’s doing now,” Bradley said with a smile. “I don’t look at any tournament any differently, no matter who’s here or who isn’t here.”

But if Lopez had been missing for the last nine years, Bradley could be the queen of the links. Instead, as Lopez awaits the birth of her second child in May, Bradley still is in waiting among the tour’s royalty.

Last year Bradley averaged 71.30 strokes per round. Only one other player has ever shot better: Lopez in 1979, at 71.20, and last year, between kids, a record 70.73.

Last year Bradley won $387,377. Only one other player has ever won more: Lopez, with $416,472 the same year.

One begins to get the drift.

Lopez wins the ’85 Mazda-LPGA Series (week-by-week finishing points), with Bradley second. Lopez wins the LPGA Championship, with Bradley second. But a month later Bradley wins the Rochester International, with Lopez second, and an Austrian cowbell rings in Westport, Mass.

“It’s right by the phone in the kitchen,” Bradley said. “Whenever I win and make the phone call home, mother grabs it and goes to the front porch and starts ringing that bell, and the neighbors realize what has happened.

“When I won at Denver she grabbed the bell and a police car stopped and said, ‘Which one did she win?’ ”

The bell has rung 16 times since Bradley, 34, turned pro in 1974. The neighbors love it. But if it rang every time she placed in the top 10, they’d probably get up a petition.

Even the LPGA Player Guide states, with no nod to Lopez, that Bradley is “possibly the most consistent player in LPGA history.” She has led the tour in sub-par rounds each of the last three years, has a record streak of eight $100,000-plus seasons and has won more money since 1980 than anyone, including Mama Lopez.

Her seventh-place tie in the Samaritan Turquoise event Sunday was as low as she’s been in four tournaments this year.

So where’s the hype? Where’s the freckled face on the Wheaties box, the quips with David Letterman?

Perhaps Bradley’s curse is her consistency. She has been second 37 times, in the top five 138 times and in the top 10 192 times. Like the New England teams she relates to and roots so hard for, she’s always very good, but sometimes not quite good enough.

“I’ve lost so much money on the Red Sox that I’ve gotta keep playing,” she said.

The final round of this year’s LPGA opener at Boca Raton, Fla., coincided with the Super Bowl.

“I wore a Patriots hat to practice and to tee off, and more people wanted to buy that hat off me,” Bradley said. “The next week I said, ‘OK, you want to buy my hat?’ No one wanted it.”

She hopes the Celtics will rebound from last year’s NBA title loss to the Lakers, whom they trounced a week ago.

“I saw some of that game,” Bradley said. “Whoee! They are strong.”

But strength alone does not hang banners in Boston Garden or ring bells in nearby Westport.

“I’ve had 37 seconds in my career and you figure, gee, if you only got half of those--we don’t want to be greedy--but there’s nothing I can do,” Bradley said. “There are some weeks I have screwed up. There are other weeks somebody came out and shot 65 the last day.

“But I guarantee you before my career is over, I will set a record that no one will break in the number of top 5 finishes, top 10 finishes, seconds--it will never be broken,” she said. “Never.”

“Winning is wonderful, and I want to be a winner, and I have won, but to have 13 years of this type of success and this type of record is in the long run 10 times better than winning this week and then not winning for another five or six months.

“I’ve never wanted to be a fly-by-nighter: here one week and you can’t find me the next. If I can be in the hunt then I know there’s going to be a day that’s my day, or someone’s going to mess up and might help me through the door. God knows I’ve helped somebody else through the door a number of times.”

Bradley, a sturdy 5-8 has the strength and stamina to handle the LPGA grind. But in the ’85 Uniden LPGA Invitational at Costa Mesa, she pulled a rare disappearing act after two rounds--the first time she had missed a cut in 121 tournaments dating to 1980.

“It was extremely devastating,” she said. “I had a hard time that Friday night coping with the idea of missing the cut.”

Bradley always had played well on the difficult Mesa Verde Country Club course, winning the Women’s Kemper Open there in ’81 and placing second to Lopez in the ’84 Uniden.

“When I finished it was close, and I thought there wouldn’t be a problem,” she said.

She went back to her hotel, telling herself that everything would be all right.

“But I did not call to find out until 10 o’clock that night. I didn’t want to call up and ask. I was afraid of the answer. When they said (the cutoff was) 152, and I knew I was 153, it was a sickening feeling.

“But I came back from that stronger than ever. I finished second in Kemper (in Hawaii) and second in Glendale. Maybe missing the cut got me away from coasting. I had been coasting, not really worried about missing cuts. It put a jolt in me like I had never experienced. It was something I wasn’t prepared for, and Friday night was a terrible, terrible night.”

Much of Bradley’s consistency, she believes, comes from reliable putting and her ability to handle bad weather.

“I’ve done well either in wet weather or in wind. I’m a good putter. I’m not a great putter. I’m not the Ben Crenshaw or the Nancy Lopez. I make my share, but there are some that frustrate me. I stroke the ball well, I have good thoughts in my mind but I still come up empty sometimes. I think that’s made a difference over the years.

“Things are changing. When I first joined the tour, if I hit a green I was ahead of 60% of the people out here. Nowadays that’s not the case. Everybody’s hitting it big. Everybody’s reaching the greens in two. I still think it boils down to the putting, because everybody is swinging basically well these days.”

Lopez missed two of the three tournaments Bradley won last year, but it probably didn’t make much difference. In the 22 tournaments when they both played, Lopez finished ahead of Bradley in only 11. They tied for third in another.

“Sometimes Nancy and I have gone head to head in a final round, paired together,” Bradley said. “Subconsciously, you can get into that match-type play. It becomes more intense. It’s much more personal. If you’re playing the whole field you tend to just concentrate on yourself.

“I admire Nancy tremendously. I admire her ability to cope with all the surroundings. I sometimes get into a shell (when) my blinders are too blinding.

“Last year I had more fun in competing. I knew Nancy and I were competing for leading-money winner and Vare Trophy (scoring average) winner, and it was a lot of fun. We both made it interesting.

“I’m extremely intense when I play. You look at JoAnne Carner and how she lets loose. I can’t do that. That’s not me. I’m sure, over the years, that has hurt. I know it’s hurt me publicity-wise. You know: ‘stone face.’ It’s one of those things I have to live with.”

Bradley was a serious ski racer in high school and may be the best sports fan in sports.

“I follow everything,” she said. “My folks own a sports shop back in Westford, Mass., so sports has been in our family since we were tiny. I started skiing when I was 6. I started playing (golf) when I was 11.

“When the Olympics were in L.A., I followed that from the moment I got off the course until it ended at midnight. Sports is a common denominator with 90% of the people in the country. I don’t know what I would do if I did not have sports in my life.”

Or, how she would do without Nancy Lopez in her life.