THE MASTERS : Notebook : Cook Loses Putter but Finds Old Friend

When John Cook went to New Orleans to play in a tour event there March 19-22, he packed his bags. Including his golf bag. But the airline lost it. And never found it.

The young Californian wasn’t happy. Not only did he hope to do well at New Orleans, but the Tournament Players Championship was coming up the following week, and the Masters two weeks after that. This was no time to be breaking in new clubs.

Sure enough, Cook, who had missed the cut in two of his three previous tournaments, struggled to a tie for 48th place. Then he missed the cut at the TPC.

But just in time, he began to be comfortable with the new clubs--and with the old putter he had pulled out of mothballs, the same Bullseye model he had used as far back as 1978, when he won the U.S. Amateur.

The airline still hasn’t found the clubs, but Cook doesn’t care. He finished sixth last week at the Greater Greensboro Open and became the first-round leader at the Masters Thursday with a three-under-par 69.

“They’re probably in somebody’s trunk,” Cook said. “If you see somebody with a black bag that has my name on it, ask him where he got it. But tell him he can keep the putter.”

Cook has won only two PGA tour events, the 1981 Bing Crosby Pro-Am and the 1983 Canadian Open. He has been gradually recovering from a 1982 injury to his right wrist that he aggravated by continuing to play. There is still “some funny looking stuff in there,” Cook said of the wrist.

When he found that he needed some help mentally as well as physically, Cook two years ago started seeing a sports psychologist.

“The main thing is, I have to really be myself,” he said Thursday. “Everybody was telling me I had to swing like (Ben) Hogan, putt like (Ben) Crenshaw and dress like (Payne) Stewart. But you can’t do that. I’m John Cook, and that’s who I have to continue to be.”

Cook, 29, won the Junior World title at age 14 and the Southern California Junior at 16. He was part of an NCAA championship team at Ohio State, where his father, Jim, was once an assistant football coach under Woody Hayes.

Mac O’Grady called Augusta National a black widow spider.

“It seduces you. It entices you. It romances you. Then it stings you and kills you,” he said.

O’Grady had insects on his mind after Thursday’s one-under 71 because he felt a dragonfly cost him a couple of shots and at least a share of the first-round lead.

At the moment he was preparing to hit his second shot on the par-4 11th hole, O’Grady was the Masters leader at three-under. He had birdied four of the previous six holes.

“Just as I was coming into the ball, a dragonfly flew through my field of vision,” O’Grady said. “I just kind of flinched.”

He hit the ball into a pond and took a double-bogey 6.

“I’d have finished three or four under. I’ve never hit in that water, ever,” moaned Mad Mac, genuinely bugged.

Masters Notes If 22-year-old Scott Verplank was nervous, he didn’t show it. On the first hole, he took a 3-iron into a bunker and hit it 189 yards--into the hole for an eagle 2. Verplank turned to playing partner Corey Pavin and said, “Just another shot.” . . . Bob Murphy hustled back to the 10th hole after completing his round to join CBS-TV’s broadcast team, which is handling the first two days of the tournament for the USA cable network. The 10th was a good hole for Murphy. He parred it. Unfortunately for Murphy, he managed only five other pars all day. He did birdie two of the last four holes. That gave him an 82. . . . Arnold Palmer did even worse than Murphy, shooting an 83. . . . One of Arnie’s new colleagues on the Seniors Tour, Tommy Aaron, who just turned 50 in February, whipped a lot of juniors in the first round with his even-par 72. . . . Ben Crenshaw, one of the tournament favorites, bogeyed three of the first four holes, made the turn at 40 and scrambled for a 75.