LPGA Tournament at Rancho Park : Alcott Ties for Lead With 5 Birdies on Last 9

When Amy Alcott was 9 years old, she used to spend her Saturdays trying to get onto the Rancho Park golf course. There was one problem. The age limit on municipal courses was 14.

Clyde Blake, the starter at Rancho Park, sometimes looked the other way so that Alcott could play.

“I probably could have gotten my wrist slapped if people knew,” Blake said. “But I’ll tell you, she could always play. And that swing! She could swing in a telephone booth or a No. 2 washtub.”

Blake is still the starter at Rancho Park, and Alcott is still playing there, although she doesn’t have to lie about her age anymore. Only about 20 minutes from where she grew up, putting balls into soup cans and chipping over hedges on a course she constructed in her front yard, Alcott is in a familiar neighborhood again.

Alcott shot a 69 Friday at Rancho Park, winging her way into a tie for the first-round lead of the AI Star Centinela Hospital tournament with five birdies on her last nine holes.

Alcott is tied with Patty Rizzo, Shelley Hamlin and Kelly Leadbetter, who also shot 69s on a brisk opening day of the $400,000 event.

Only a shot behind the leaders at 70 were Nina Foust, Juli Inkster and Marta Figueras-Dotti. There was a large group at 71, headed by Nancy Lopez, Jane Geddes and Hollis Stacy.

Alcott’s 32 was the best score on the front nine, her finishing holes because she began her round on No. 10. She needed the five birdies on those nine holes because she had bogeyed three of the first five she played.

“A barrage of birdies,” Alcott described the front nine.

For a while, Alcott went about her business manufacturing birdies, mechanically making her shots as if she were RoboPutt.

Check the scorecard. No. 1: 5-iron to 15 feet, birdie. No. 2: chip from 50 yards out to 1 foot, birdie. No. 4: 6-iron to 8 feet, birdie. No. 8: wedge from 96 yards to 10 feet, birdie. No. 9: pitching wedge from 90 yards to 6 inches, birdie.

Because this is a 54-hole event, Alcott figured that she’d picked a pretty good time to get hot.

“You don’t have time in a 54-hole tournament to make a mistake and come back from it,” she said. “You have to be right on from the beginning.”

Leadbetter, a late starter, was five par under through 11 holes but dropped back into a tie with two three-putt bogeys.

A two-time national women’s public links champion, Leadbetter said she feels comfortable on public courses. That was apparent when she shot a 30 on the back nine, her first nine holes since she started on 10.

“So that was fun,” she said.

Leadbetter’s husband, David, is a teaching pro in Grenelefe, Fla., and has worked with Nick Faldo, David Frost and Ken Brown on their swings.

Hamlin’s has been a career in descent for about 10 years. At 38 and in her 17th year as a pro, she has not won a tournament since the 1978 Patty Berg. But she said her real low point occurred only last Tuesday.

Hamlin said she cost her friend and bridge partner, Sylvia Bertolaccini, $4 when they teamed, then lost a bet on the golf course. Afterward, Bertolaccini noticed that Hamlin was striking the ball poorly, so they went to the practice range and worked on Hamlin’s swing.

Apparently, it has helped Hamlin. Even when she hit a short drive, it didn’t hurt her.

“Once I hit a dog of a drive,” she said. “But I dogged it straight. That was the difference today.”

There were three birdies and no bogeys in Hamlin’s round. She missed an eagle on her closing hole, the 470-yard No. 9, when she hit a wedge within 3 inches of the cup. Hamlin interpreted it as a positive sign.

“I think of myself as an eternal optimist,” she said. “All I need is a little shred of evidence and I go crazy. I can get dangerous here. It’s not reality that’s important, it’s what we think we are.”

Confidence has not been Rizzo’s strength, but that may be changing after her opening round.

She has not won since 1985, but she opened with birdies on the 435-yard, par-5 No. 2, where she rolled in a 30-foot putt, and another at the par-3 No. 3, where she just missed a hole-in-one. Rizzo’s 4-iron landed a foot from the cup.

On the 10th, Rizzo sank an 8-footer for a birdie and then drove the 157-yard 12th with a 5-iron and put the ball a foot from the hole. She birdied that hole, too. Not even a three-putt bogey on the 17th could upset Rizzo, who is working on her attitude.

“I wonder about myself, the distance between what I’m doing and (Ayako) Okamoto and (Jan) Stephenson and what they’re doing. What’s different? I know it’s not physical. I know it’s mental.”

Rizzo, 27, said she has been putting too much pressure on herself to produce. So Rizzo decided to pace herself mentally.

“You have to realize that most tournaments are not four 18-hole tournaments,” she said. “If I shot two-over the first day, I’d say, ‘I can’t win this tournament.’ It’s all attitude. It’s all a mental game.

“Okamoto, it’s just easy for her. She feels like she can’t do anything wrong. She just breezes around, hits all the greens, makes a couple of putts and wins. Maybe that’s the little bit I’m missing.”

But Okamoto was also missing a little bit Friday. The leading money winner, and only two-time winner on the tour, shot a 72 and said she was too tired to do any better.

Okamoto won the San Diego Inamori tournament Sunday but said she is mentally and physically tired.

“I couldn’t sleep very well last night,” she said. “Maybe what I need is a good rest.”

Next week, Okamoto is going to give herself and her game a rest. She is going back to Tokyo to relax. She will play one tournament there before returning to the United States for the Chrysler-Plymouth May 13 at Middleton, N.J.

‘It’s just not working well,” said Okamoto, who didn’t sound too worried.

She also complained about not feeling well last week after the second round in San Diego, then went out and shot a 63.

Can she do it this week, too?

“I have no idea,” she said. “I just have to go out on the golf course and find out how I feel.”