SEEKING A NAME TO FIT HIS GAME : After a Slow Start, Former UCLA Golfer Steve Pate Has Outplayed Most of His Notable College Teammates on the PGA Tour

Under the swaying chandeliers of the ultra-lavish La Costa Country Club’s clubhouse--a clubhouse that has more expensive restaurants than many cities in this country--the search was on for golfer Steve Pate, an entrant in the PGA’s exclusive Tournament of Champions. A security guard stationed outside the players’ locker room was asked if perhaps Pate recently had passed by.

“No, sir,” he replied. “Haven’t seen him.”

He was then asked if he actually knew what Pate looked like.

“No, sir, I don’t,” he replied. “But I know what the rest of the golfers in the tournament look like, and so far this morning I’ve known everyone who came by.”

Welcome to the clandestine world of Steve Pate, proud owner of a golf swing that’s sweeter than an Opra Winfrey dessert and of a competitive heart that could put a lion to rout. But despite his skills and his recent screeching ascent toward the top of the golf world, Pate can still walk into any restaurant and not get noticed.

Once in a while someone recognizes the name. More than once he has been slapped on the back by an overweight, chartreuse-clad golf buff who grabs his right hand and pumps away, bellowing, “Sure is nice to meet you, Jerry.”

Jerry Pate was a decent golfer, rising to No. 6 on the PGA money list in both 1980 and 1981. But he has faded fast since 1982, dropping out of sight for the past two years with tournament winnings of less than $8,000 in 1985 and Arnold Palmer tip-money of $1,445 in 1986.

“It bothers me sometimes when people think I’m Jerry Pate,” said a miffed and unrelated Steve Pate. “I mean, at least people should know the difference between me and some guy who hasn’t played in 40 years.”

But Steve Pate, despite his lack of historical accuracy, knows that talking won’t change anything. He knows that if Palmer, the legend himself, had made more bogeys than birdies in his golfing career, he would have been known only as the bad golfer with the loose pants. A name on the PGA Tour is made by cranking out long drives, scorching your 6-irons into the pins and making the putts.

Pate, however, knows he’s on the verge of shaking the “Jerry” tag. Since the end of last summer, it can be argued that no one in the world has played better golf than Stephen Robert Pate. He finished 26th on the 1987 money list by grabbing nearly $200,000 in his last seven tournaments of the year, including a $72,000 payday for winning the Abilene Southwest tournament in late September. At La Costa last week, in the first event of 1988, Pate hammered his way to a $90,000 check, winning the rain-shortened event after opening with sizzling, back-to-back rounds of 66.

And the Pate Express showed no signs of slowing this week as he surged toward the top in the Bob Hope Classic. Entering today’s fifth and final round, Pate is eight strokes off the lead at 12-under-par 276.

So who is this guy who has emerged from the pack of nameless, faceless young men who have taken turns winning tournaments for the past five years?

For openers, Pate, 26, played for and graduated from a decent little local golf school named UCLA. He grew up near Santa Barbara and now lives in Simi Valley, playing out of the wind-swept Wood Ranch Country Club. He was introduced to the game at age 9 by his father Don, who owned a quaint little 22-room house adjoining the Montecito Country Club just south of Santa Barbara. These days, Don Pate has a wide smile permanently stretched across his face. But at the beginning, his was a smile turned upside down.

“We had a three-acre lawn around the house and right from the start, Steve and his brother John started breaking windows with golf balls,” the elder Pate said. “When Steve was 12, he chipped one through a very large window in the library of the house. I mean a very large window. Boom!”

A few broken windows would seem a small price to pay for such a huge success by your offspring. Glass is relatively inexpensive. It’s not like the young Pate set the place on fire or anything like that.

“Then there was the time he set the place on fire,” Don Pate recalled. “It was cold out and he wanted to hit some balls on the back lawn, so he took my hand-warmer, one of those things filled with lighter fluid that you use for duck hunting or cold-weather fishing. Somehow he spilled the fluid and he just kept on hitting golf balls. Never noticed.

“I’m in the house and my neighbor calls on the phone and says, ‘Sorry to bother you, Don, but your lawn is on fire.’ ”

That fire was extinguished, but the one inside Pate never went out.

“I remember the first few times I played,” he said. “Even when I was terrible I expected to play great. Right from the start, I hated to play bad. I just couldn’t stand the thought of walking around in the hot sun smacking a little white ball unless I was really good at it. And I made up my mind to get good at it.”

Pate enjoyed baseball, too, but decided to give it up in the eighth grade because it was interfering with his golf. He played on his high school team but didn’t get any wild reviews. He was admitted to UCLA because of a strong academic performance in high school, not because he could putt. But he impressed UCLA golf Coach Eddie Merrins and was awarded a four-year golf scholarship.

“I always thought about how great it would be to play pro golf, but UCLA was the first place where I really knew I could do it,” he said.

There were better players than Pate on the UCLA team. One was Corey Pavin, who has made a splash on the tour. But the others have struggled. And Pate has, for now, risen above all of them.

“I see guys I played college golf with who were a lot better than I was,” he said. “But most of them are playing mini-tour stuff and playing on foreign tours. A lot of it is mental, starting with the qualifying school. It only happens once a year, and if you don’t get your tour card after a few times at the school, it’s pretty easy to get discouraged, I would think.”

Pate only can speculate on how discouraging that might be because he plowed through qualifying school on his first attempt in the fall of 1984. He finished seventh out of a field of 200 and became a card-carrying member of the PGA Tour.

And then he found out that competing with the big boys can be about as much fun as getting cracked in the shin with a sand wedge.

“I didn’t make any money for the first six months of my rookie year,” Pate said. “My biggest check was for $900. I started to wonder what was going on, whether I belonged out there.”

But then came the Atlanta Classic. Perhaps only General Sherman had a better time in Georgia than Pate. He forced a playoff with Wayne Levi by dropping a sweaty, 12-foot birdie putt on No. 18. He lost the playoff when Levi birdied the second hole of the playoff, but his check for $54,000 lessened the pain, oh, let’s say a lot.

“My career earnings went from $5,000 to $60,000 in one week,” Pate said. “Going into that tournament, I was looking at having to go back to qualifying school. Now I didn’t have to worry about that anymore. It wasn’t so much the money. I had a sponsor, so I really didn’t have to worry about the money right away. But it got a little old finishing 65th every week.”

He earned $90,000 that year, putting him 86th on the money list. In 1986, his earnings jumped to $176,000, good enough for 51st on the list. After his torrid finish in 1987, he had pulled in $335,000 for the year.

He said he never thought it could be this good.

“I don’t play for some kind of 24-hour recognition,” he said. “I don’t need everyone to stop and stare at me when I walk into a restaurant like they do with Arnold Palmer. Not being recognized isn’t such a bad thing. It would be nice sometimes, but all I ask is that people know who I am, respect my game and recognize me as a good player.”

And for starters, quit calling him Jerry.