Golf Roundup : Lawyer Says O’Grady Can Play for Two More Weeks

PGA Tour Commissioner Deane Beman will have to revoke his $5,000 fine and six-event suspension of golfer Mac O’Grady for at least two weeks as part of an agreement reached in the chambers of a U.S. District judge in San Diego, Steve Novak, O’Grady’s attorney, said Thursday.

According to Novak, PGA attorneys were forced to accept the deal because Judge Edward J. Schwartz had indicated he would probably invoke a temporary restraining order if the PGA did not agree.

“I don’t know if the commissioner will formally revoke it,” said Novak, who noted that he had not informed O’Grady, who is in Scotland playing in the British Open, along with Beman. “He (Beman) is not going to be happy about it. But this should allow him (O’Grady) to play in the Buick Open next week and the Western Open the week after that.”

The revocation will stay in effect until Aug. 4, when a hearing for a preliminary injuction on the penalties can be heard by Schwartz.

If the injunction is granted, the penalty revocation will be extended for “probably a year, or a year and a half, until a hearing is scheduled,” Novak said.

The six-event suspension, for “conduct unbecoming a professional golfer,” was handed down earlier this year and upheld by a three-member PGA appeals committee last week. It went into affect Monday. The British Open, however, is a non-PGA Tour-sanctioned tournament.

Ok Hee Ku of South Korea survived an errant drive on the opening hole that found water and charged back for a four-under-par 68 and the first-round lead in the $275,000 LPGA Boston Five tournament at Danvers, Mass.

Ku, who joined the American tour in January after winning several tournaments in Korea and Japan, mastered Tara Ferncroft’s short but exacting 6,008-yard course to move one shot ahead of Penny Pulz, Barbara Barrow, Penny Hammel, Allison Finney and Kathy Young.

Veteran Sandra Palmer was in a group at 70, while newly crowned U.S. Open champion Jane Geddes and the tour’s leading money winner, Pat Bradley, were in another group at 71.

The 5-1 Ku, 30, salvaged a bogey 5 on the first hole and matched par of 35 on the front nine, then had four birdies on the back nine.

“I putted very well, but the first hole, when I had what I considered a good bogey, got me going,” Ku said through an interpreter.

Bob Lohr, who has finished no higher than eighth in three years on the PGA Tour, shot a seven-under-par 63 to take the first-round lead in the $400,000 Hardee’s tournament at Coal Valley, Ill.

Lohr was one stroke ahead of Curt Byrum, who was making his first PGA Tour appearance of the year after losing his qualifying card last season.

Two strokes off the pace was Kikuo Arai, a 42-year-old pro who won 14 tournaments in Japan before joining the PGA Tour briefly in 1984 and then in earnest last year.