Ex-Bruin is Off to Most Lucrative Start in PGA History : Pavin the Way to Riches

It is the fastest start in PGA Tour history, proving to Corey Pavin that he can be both concerned parent and effective golfer.

It is also the realization of a goal Pavin set in December, when he spent much of his holiday vacation with Bruce Hamilton, the pro at Las Posas Country Club in Camarillo and his longtime tutor and confidante.

“Corey is a perfectionist who keeps striving for consistency, and he wasn’t happy about the way he played over the second half of last year,” Hamilton said. “He felt he was losing his concentration and losing shots down the stretch. He came up in December with the goal of re-establishing his consistency and confidence and emphasizing a fast start in ’87.”

Pavin said that his disappointing play over the second half of last season could be traced to a genuinely happy event. Shannon, his wife, gave birth to their first child, Ryan, in May. That changed his priorities, Pavin said.

“I wanted to be home,” he said. “I wanted to help. I wanted to watch him grow. I spent more time away from the course and it had an expected effect on my consistency. I looked at the situation in December and realized I could do a better job of dividing my time, that by playing to my potential I’d be contributing to Ryan’s welfare in an important way as well.”

Potential?

Operating off his December blueprint, Pavin has already earned $307,040, more than any player has ever earnedto this point and more than he earned all of last year when he was 19th on the PGA money list with $304,558.

He has played in five tournaments, winning both the Hawaiian Open and the Bob Hope Desert Classic. He has also finished 6th at Phoenix, 12th in the Tournament of Champions and 29th at Pebble Beach.

Though he skipped last week’s tournament at San Diego, Pavin leads the tour in birdies and earnings and is second in scoring average and subpar rounds.

“Certainly it’s exciting, but I have to keep it in perspective,” Pavin said. “We’ve only played five or six weeks. There are a lot of tournaments left. I want to wait until the end of the year before I take a hard look at it. I don’t want to think about what this start could lead to. I want to keep practicing, keep improving, stay consistent.

“I mean, there’s no question but that this kind of start has given me a lot of confidence. I particularly sense it with my putting, but I still want to take it a week at a time. I don’t want to lose sight of that.”

This week, it’s the 61st Los Angeles Open at Riviera Country Club. The 72-hole tournament starts today and has a purse of $600,000.

The field includes defending champion Doug Tewell, player of the year Bob Tway, Spain’s Seve Ballesteros, Lee Trevino, 1985 L.A. Open winner Lanny Wadkins and resident PGA eccentric Mac O’Grady.

Pavin, 27, a UCLA graduate who grew up in Oxnard, will be something of a hometown favorite.

He maintains a Los Angeles condominium while making his home now in Orlando, Fla.

“People say there’s a lot of pressure playing at home, but I love it,” Pavin said. “I think it’s a real advantage to be able to sleep in your own bed, eat regularly and hear friends cheering for you and rooting for UCLA, as I always seem to do when I play in the Los Angeles area.

“I’d love to win a major, of course, but next to that, this is probably the tournament I’d most like to win.”

Pavin played in the L.A. Open twice as an amateur and this will be his fourth appearance as a pro. He was third in 1985 and sixth last year.

He does not believe that the week off, coming in the wake of a final-round 64 and a sudden-death victory over Craig Stadler in the Hawaiian Open, will have stripped him of his momentum.

“I know enough that I can’t play every week no matter how well I’m playing,” he said. “And I really didn’t feel I played that well in the early rounds at Hawaii. It was more a matter of legging it out and making some putts. I could feel the effects of six straight weeks and felt it was time to gather some strength again.”

Which is not to say that he spent the entire week on the carpet, playing with Ryan.

On Last Tuesday, while they were playing a practice round in San Diego, Pavin drove to Camarillo to have Hamilton inspect his swing.

“Basically just a check-up,” Hamilton said. “He wanted to be sure his swing plane was right and that he wasn’t losing it on the top.

“As I said, he’s a perfectionist.”

Hamilton, 35, was an assistant pro at Las Posas when he began working with a teen-age Pavin 12 years ago.

Pavin had begun playing when he was six, tailing after older brothers Fletcher and Matthew.

“It was kind of love at first sight,” Pavin said of his attraction to the game.

At 17, Pavin became the youngest player ever to win the L.A. City amateur championship. He won 11 tournaments at UCLA, including the Pacific 10 title in 1982, when he was also collegiate player of the year.

Then, in his first try at the tour qualifying school, he failed.

“It’s all hypothetical, but I now feel that was a blessing,” he said.

Pavin went overseas and won the South African Open, the German Open and the Calberson Classic in France, returning with $75,000 in earnings.

“I gained a lot of experience that I might not have gotten here,” he said. “I learned what it takes to win against good players. It helped me to mature.”

His second try at the PGA qualifying school was a success, and he joined the tour in 1984, winning the Houston Open en route to earnings of $265,536, a rookie record. He won the Colonial National and $367,506 in 1985, when he led the tour by finishing in the top 10 of 13 tournaments, and he won at Hawaii and Milwaukee last year en route to that $304,558.

“I think that Corey is in the process of becoming one of the best players ever,” Hamilton said. “He works hard, strives to get better and is very critical of himself, so that self-satisfaction is never a problem.

“His real strength is in the area of course management. His concentration and thinking process is so strong that he doesn’t allow himself to get in trouble. He keeps it in play.”

That, of course, would seem imperative for a player who stands 5 feet 9 inches and weighs 140 pounds.

Pavin, however, doesn’t consider his size a detriment.

“It may have been when I was younger and couldn’t hit the ball as far as the bigger kids,” he said. “But every year, my swing has gotten better and so has my distance.

“I mean, size is no problem at all. I’m now hitting the ball farther than I ever have and straighter than I ever have. That’s a real nice combination.”

The other part of it is that Pavin’s putting is improving, too.

“I’ve always putted well but I’ve never made a lot of 15- to 20-footers,” he said. “I’m starting to make more of those now, which has been a key to this start. I’ve played as well at other times, but I’m making medium-range putts now that I didn’t before.

“I think it’s all a matter of experience and maturity. My game has improved every year and I think it will continue to improve, but for how long I don’t know. I’m hoping I’ll have to wait 15 or 20 years to find out.”