Conner, Lye, Peoples Top Field With 65s : Among Them, the Leaders in San Diego Open Have Only One Victory

Leader No. 1 is the answer to a trivia question. Leader No. 2 draws stares every time he pulls his putter out of his bag. Leader No. 3 sank everything but the Merrimac Thursday.

Among them, Frank Conner, Mark Lye and David Peoples made 23 birdies and shared first place at 65, seven under par, after one round of the Shearson Lehman Hutton Open at Torrey Pines North and South.

But among them, Conner, Lye and Peoples have won one PGA event in their combined 30 years on tour.

That is why former PGA champion Bob Tway’s 66 on the tougher South course looked better and better as this sunny but cool afternoon wore on. David Frost, Gil Morgan and Scott Verplank, also name players in a relatively nameless field, fired 67s along with Rick Fehr and Brad Faxon.

And favorites Mark O’Meara, Fred Couples, Joey Sindelar and Mark Calcavecchia finished with 68, 68, 70 and 72, respectively.

There were 66s turned in by Canadian Dave Barr and Californian Dennis Trixler. There was a 67 by San Diego left-hander Ernie Gonzalez. And there were 18 players besides O’Meara and Couples at 68. Former U.S. Open champions Jerry Pate and Johnny Miller were among 16 players at 69, one better than a large group at 70 that included two-time San Diego winner Tom Watson.

But Conner, Lye and Peoples were kings for at least this one day.

The pudgy Conner grew up in Belleville, Ill., where he was a nationally ranked tennis player and practice partner for neighbor Jimmy Connors. He later became a three-time tennis All-American at Trinity University in San Antonio.

He switched to golf in his early 20s. Trivia buffs will note that Conner and Ellsworth Vines are the only men ever to play in the U.S. Open tennis tournament and the U.S. Open golf tournament.

Before Thursday, Conner had played in two golf tournaments this year without surviving a cut. His caddie here sells used tires for a living. Other pertinent biographical information includes a 1982 victory in the King Hassan Open in Morocco.

Lots of putts dropped for Conner Thursday on the shorter North course, eight of them for birdies and seven of them in a nine-hole stretch. None of them was longer than 20 feet.

Not so trivial is the 42-inch putter wielded by the gangly Lye, who spent his off-season lifting weights 2 1/2 hours a day.

The weight training has added length off the tee--he hit the North course’s 488-yard par-5 with a drive and a six-iron--and the extra-long putter has added confidence on the greens. Still, people stare.

“It’s hard to deal with everyone looking at you funny,” Lye says. “I’ve heard the snickering.”

But nobody laughed when he holed a 60-foot putt that went uphill then downhill before it dropped into the hole for a birdie on the 435-yard No. 8. It followed his only bogey and helped him retain his confidence.

Lye said the shorter North course plays about “two shots” easier than the South course. Which means Peoples’ 65 on the South was the best round of the day. The field will switch courses today. The final two rounds will be played exclusively on the South course.

Peoples’ bogey-free round included birdie putts of 55, 40, 30, 20, and 15 feet. He missed a four-footer for birdie on No. 18 that would have given him the outright lead and a $50,000 zero coupon Treasury certificate, the tournament sponsor’s has promised each day’s low round shooter. Because of the ties, the coupon will carry over to today’s round where the low shooter can win $100,000 in coupons if nobody ties him.

Peoples credited his host for the week, Rancho Santa Fe amateur Ed Whittemore, for an impromptu putting lesson on the eve of the tournament. Peoples and Whittemore hadn’t met before this week. In essence, Whittemore told Peoples to stick with the original read on his putts once he stood over the ball.

The highlight of Tway’s round was an 18-foot eagle putt on the 537-yard sixth hole that he reached with a driver and a three-wood. After winning this tournament in 1986, Tway went on to win three more times that year including the PGA where he blasted in from a bunker on the 72nd hole to snatch the championship away from a stunned Greg Norman.

But Tway hasn’t won since, going from second on the money list that year to 47th to 29th in 1988. “After a couple of years of not winning, you really start to feel like doing it again,” he said.

Notes

Tom Watson’s two-under par 70 on the North course was five shots behind the leaders. But he’s not sweating for a check. Watson has won $4,978,584 on the Tour and will go over the $5 million mark in career earnings if he finishes eighth or better this week. Only Jack Nicklaus ($5,008,753) has won more official money than Watson. Nicklaus is not playing here. If Watson finishes fourth or better, he will vault past Nicklaus and into first place on the all-time money list.

Five of the top 20 all-time money winners are in this tournament. They are Watson (second), John Mahaffey (11th), Craig Stadler (14th), Johnny Miller (15th) and Gil Morgan (18th). . . . Left-hander Ernie Gonzalez, will turn 28 Sunday. His victory in the rain-shortened 1986 Pensacola Open was the last by a left-hander on tour. Before that, the last victory by a left-hander was by New Zealand’s Bob Charles at Greensboro, N.C., in 1974. . . . Mac O’Grady shot 38 on the front side of the North and withdrew. Tournament officials said the reason was a bad back. . . . David Peoples’ 30 on the front side of the South course was one shot off the seven-under par nine-hole record of 29 shot by David Frost in 1987.