U.S. OPEN GOLF CHAMPIONSHIP : Favorites Agree: Par Might Be Enough to Win on This Course

The scores are not going to be all that good in the 87th U.S. Open golf tournament, which begins today on the Olympic Club’s Lake course. After bundling against the chill and trundling up and down each hill of Olympic during practice rounds, the players can agree on that.

Seve Ballesteros said: “If the conditions are good, I think even par could be good enough to win it.”

Greg Norman said: “If the weather stays like this, I don’t see any scores in the red (under-par) numbers. Ten over par, eight over could win it.”

Jack Nicklaus said: “Par will be a very good score this week, I would think.”

Defending champion Ray Floyd said: “The winning score may be the highest we’ve seen . . . well, in a lot of years.”

The greens are quite small, quite hard, quite fast, and definitely tricky. Not as small as Baltusrol’s, maybe, but small. Greenskeeper Kevin Kelly says they are “like Russian newspapers, very hard to read.”

The rough is definitely rough. Not as thick as Turnberry’s, maybe, but thick. Six feet of two-inch rough has been added to both sides of the fairways, and the remainder of the rough has grown four inches high. Rambo’s knife couldn’t cut it. Golfer Andy Bean saw someone on a tractor trimming the grass the other day, and gave him a standing ovation.

The trees are everywhere, 40,000 of them, so you had better hit it straight. Lee Trevino said that the guys who can hit the ball far, such as Norman, Ballesteros and Sandy Lyle, need only keep it down the middle. “They don’t even need to bring a driver. They can play this course with a 1-iron,” he said.

The hills, as they do for little cable cars, rise halfway to the stars. Ballesteros says he gets worn out, just climbing them. If he could use an electric cart, he would have to find one with low gear.

The wind, whipping off the Ocean course along the Pacific and right over to the Lake course, can make golfers look like Marcel Marceau pretending to walk against a storm. And it can make them shiver, too. This might be the first tournament ever won by someone in a down vest.

Long? You want long? We got long. The 16th hole is 609 yards, and Nicklaus calls it “about as difficult a hole as you’re going to find on a golf course.”

The 17th hole goes 428 yards--and it’s a par-4. When Olympic’s club members play it, it’s a 5. Norman, one of the longest hitters who ever swung a club, calls the 17th “practically unreachable.”

At 6,714 yards, this place is rather short, by pro tour standards, and is not supposed to be a monster. But golfer Mike Reid said: “It’s the longest 6,800-yard course on the planet.”

The pros thought Olympic was lean and mean in 1966, when the U.S. Open was last held here. But evidently, they ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

Norman said: “The golf course is probably set up the best I’ve ever seen of any major championship. I think we’re going to see high scores this week.” And: “It might be one of the few golf clubs where some good golfers will be shut out with birdies.”

Olympic has these golfers concerned, even confused. Ballesteros said it’s a perfect course for left-to-right hitters, calling it made to order for someone like Trevino. Trevino couldn’t believe Seve had said such a thing. “Did he play the 16th? The 17th? The 18th? How about the first? Did he play the front nine?”

Yes, he did. But Ballesteros had never set foot on Olympic until this week. Neither had a lot of these golfers. Only five of them in this year’s field--Nicklaus, Floyd, Trevino, Johnny Miller and Hale Irwin--played in the 1966 Open here. To most of these players, this is a strange new land.

Over the years, Olympic has been the sort of place where members are so protective of their turf, and so devoted to their own year-round play, that the two-week interruption of preparing for and conducting a major tournament is hardly worth it. The reason Olympic has gone so long without a major tournament is that club officials simply never made a bid for one.

Originally, the Ocean course, or “Pacific Links,” as first christened, was designed to be the championship course, but a landslide in 1926 wiped out much of the layout. That happened two years after the Olympic sent 22 of its club-sponsored athletes to Paris to compete in the actual Olympics.

Its membership rolls over the years have included Gentleman Jim Corbett, the boxer; Edmund (Pat) Brown, the former governor of California, and Sandy Tatum, who later became the United States Golf Assn.’s president. Ken Venturi was a club champion here, and Bob Rosburg and Johnny Miller also belonged. Nathaniel Crosby, Bing’s son, won the U.S. Amateur here in 1981.

It is a course of considerable beauty, with the ocean visible from many vantage points and, from hole No. 3, the illuminated Golden Gate Bridge as well. Olympic is not a stadium course, not one of those architectural wonders with island greens that feature everything but miniature golf course windmills in front of the cups.

“Everything is natural,” two-time U.S. Open champion Andy North said. “There are no fancy out of bounds, no railroad ties left around for visual effect. It’s just a beautiful place with natural hazards like wind and trees. It’s the sort of place that says, ‘If you think you can play me, go ahead and try.’ ”

Starting today, 154 golfers will go ahead and try. Favorites, naturally, include Norman and Ballesteros, but also Payne Stewart, thought by many to be the best American player of the moment, as well as PGA tour money leader Paul Azinger, hot Hal Sutton, always dangerous Bernhard Langer and 1986 runner-up Lanny Wadkins.

You certainly cannot count out Lyle, Ben Crenshaw, Corey Pavin, Tom Kite, Mark Calcavecchia, Masters champion Larry Mize, maybe even Miller, who knows this course like the back of his glove. Miller always enjoys playing in the Bay Area. He won at Pebble Beach earlier this year.

Nicklaus, Floyd and Trevino, all 45 or older, could not tell a lie this week, claiming that their own games were in disarray. Tom Watson, who took the 1982 Open at Pebble with that spectacular chip at the 17th hole, is striking the ball well, but still having trouble putting. Bob Tway, too, is struggling.

Nicklaus figures the tournament can be won by “a plodder, somebody who can keep it straight, somebody patient, somebody who doesn’t try to be a hero on many holes. (Ben) Hogan was the kind of guy who played that way. Arnold (Palmer) is generally not a patient golfer. Maybe that’s why he had the trouble he did here.”

Palmer led the 1966 Open by five shots with four holes to play, only to get reckless. He ended up losing to Billy Casper in an 18-hole playoff the next day.

Palmer attempted to qualify for this year’s tournament, but failed. Trevino said he thought it a dirty shame that former champions do not get a lifetime exemption.

It is difficult to imagine Nicklaus entering a qualifying event, but the four-time Open champion certainly isn’t playing like his old self. At the tour stop last week in Harrison, N.Y., Nicklaus said he “played about as badly as I’ve ever played in a golf tournament.”

And after a practice round here Tuesday, he did not believe things were looking up. He has even stopped using the large putter he has been using, including at the 1986 Masters, and has gone back to a 25-year-old blade.

Asked about Olympic, Nicklaus said: “I don’t have any complaint with the golf course. The only complaint I’ve got is with Jack Nicklaus. I’ve got to give him a swift kick to get him going.”

Trevino, who did very nicely at the 1986 U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills, tying for fourth place, was asked if he had any chance this week and replied: “No, no, no. Not at all.”

Unless it rains, he added. He said every major tournament he ever won, it rained sometime during the event, leaving longer hitters stuck in the mud. If it rains, Trevino said: “I’m here, baby, I’m here. Let’s play in the Philippines.”

At the other end of the spectrum are Norman and Ballesteros, arguably the world’s greatest golfers. Both are playing well. But both are bothered still by having lost big tournaments at the last possible minute, in playoffs--both to Mize at the Masters, and Ballesteros again last week in New York.

It took Norman several weeks to recover from Mize’s amazing chip at Augusta.

Yes, he said, “It took a while to get over the Masters, maybe a month or even six weeks. A lot longer than what I expected.”

Ballesteros stalked off after the three-way Masters playoff without comment, and did likewise last Sunday after losing a playoff to J.C. Snead. The week after the Masters, he did win a tournament in Cannes, France, and grinned widely while adding: “I won it in a playoff.”

For Ballesteros, the U.S. Open has become “the most important tournament for me, the No. 1 target” because it is one of the two Grand Slam events that have eluded him, the other being the PGA.

Olympic, which is as foreign to him as he is to it, will be a difficult place to win. “It is playing long and difficult,” Ballesteros said. “The 17th is especially difficult. It takes a driver and 1-iron to reach it, and it is a par-4! But, it doesn’t matter if it is a par-2 or par-22. The course never makes any bogeys. The golfers do.”

Was he confident? Yes, he was confident. Confidence can be a great factor in golf.

But when Floyd finished a practice round, he had very little.

“After playing out there today, I don’t see how anybody can feel confident this week,” he said.