Pebble Beach Golf Tournament : Weather Not Factor, but Strange Certainly Is With 64

One day after he shot a 65 in a pro-am round but was disqualified for signing an incorrect score card, Curtis Strange shot a 64 Thursday at Pebble Beach and was very careful about what he signed.

“I checked my score card today,” Strange said. “I must have checked it 6 or 7 times.”

And Strange, who has said even more often that he really isn’t thinking about becoming golf’s first Mr. Million in yearly earnings, turned his spikes in that direction anyway.

Strange’s first-round score in the $2-million Nabisco Championships, only 2 shots off the Pebble Beach record, put him 3 strokes ahead of Ken Green, who had a 67, and 4 ahead of Joey Sindelar at 68.

Five others were tied at 69--Bob Tway, David Frost, Scott Verplank, Jay Haas and Bruce Lietzke.

It was an unusual day at the seaside Pebble Beach Golf Links, where the weather was absolutely no factor. There was neither wind nor rain, and for Strange there were no bogeys.

Strange, last year’s leading money winner, began this final PGA tournament of 1988 in seventh place on the money list with a revamped swing and a relaxed outlook.

“I have a lot to gain and not a lot to lose,” Strange said. “I can hear the calculators going now.”

The Nabisco, with a $360,000 check awaiting the winner, is golf’s richest prize, and Strange has insisted that too much attention has been paid to the amount of money at stake.

So for at least a day, Strange’s golf game dominated.

He had 6 birdies, an eagle, no errors and left playing partner Mark Calcavecchia shaking his head in wonder.

“It was the finest round of golf, tee to green, I’ve ever seen played,” Calcavecchia said. “He kept hitting it stiff, shot after shot after shot.”

“He’s got a 95% chance to win the tournament, at least,” Calcavecchia said. “Put that in the paper. Put some pressure on him.”

Strange got off quickly with birdies on the first 2 holes. On No. 1, Strange knocked a 9-iron, his second shot, 4 inches from the hole. He came right back on the 502-yard par-5 No. 2 with another birdie when he 2-putted from 20 feet after his 3-wood had traveled 220 yards to the green.

“I have to go back a long way to play a better round of golf than I did today,” Strange said and then gave two reasons for it.

“The quality of shot and the direction they went,” he said.

Strange posted consecutive birdies on Nos. 5 and 6 after accurate approach shots left him short putts of 3 and 5 feet. He saved par on the nerve-rattling 107-yard par-3 No. 7 after his 9-iron from the tee missed the tiny green to the left.

Strange chipped to 10 feet and made the putt. If that par saved his round, though, Strange’s eagle on the 384-yard 11th made it.

After hitting his driver, Strange was still 131 yards from the hole, so he chose an 8-iron. The ball hit the green 2 feet short of the hole, bounced once and went in.

Strange also birdied both of the par-5s coming in, due to accurate iron play. A 9-iron third shot left him 10 feet short on No. 14, and on No. 18, a 9-iron got Strange within 18 inches.

Add it up, sign the right score card and it’s a 64. The only round at Pebble Beach better than the one Strange shot Thursday was Tom Kite’s 62 in the 1983 Crosby tournament.

“Obviously, if I play as well as I did today, I’ll be pretty close Sunday afternoon,” he said. “But I can’t think about that too much now.”

Sixteen of the 30-player field broke par on the 6,799-yard course, which yielded an unusually high number of good scores.

Green, a two-time winner this year, eagled the 502-yard No. 2, birdied No. 3 and was 4 under par through 7 holes when he birdied the par-3 seventh.

Afterward, Green stood just off the green and on the edge of the cliff looking at the ocean. Frost, who was playing alongside him, came up from behind and playfully pushed Green toward the water, but made sure he caught him.

“I must have jumped 10 feet,” Green said.

Frost, however, saved his best shot for later. His 15-foot putt for par on No. 17 stopped just short of the hole, but it dropped in after a delay of several seconds.

Green, despite his score of 67, said he played a “very mediocre” round.

“I’ll have to play better to compete with Curtis Strange or Joe Blow or whoever is up there,” he said.

Greg Norman, hardly a Joe Blow, might have shot himself out of contention. Norman, who double-bogeyed the first hole and hit the ball into the water on 18, finished at 75 and is 11 strokes behind Strange.

Norman and six others were the only players over par for the day.

Sindelar, who played the front nine at par, came in with 4 birdies and a 32 to get within 4 strokes of Strange. Chip Beck, the leading money winner this year, finished with a 1-under-par 71.

Strange said his round Thursday compared favorably to the 62 he shot at St. Andrews in the Dunhill Cup matches, which is the record on the Old Course.

This is not Strange’s first opportunity to win at Pebble Beach. In 1985, the last year of the Crosby before it changed names, Strange was a shot behind eventual winner Mark O’Meara on the 72nd hole, but missed a 10-foot birdie putt.

Strange still remembers reading that putt: “Jack Nicklaus might have known it went straight, but I didn’t know it went straight.”

Strange has made an adjustment in his swing, which, he said, is helping him. He said he had been moving his weight out on his right leg, but now his swing has tightened up. And the result?

“Whatever it does to your shot, it did to mine today,” he said.