THE TURN : The Front Side of His Golf Career Has Been a Success, but George Archer Has a Few Holes Left on the Senior Tour

In professional golf, a player can be an aging veteran one day and a rookie the next.

Life on the Senior PGA Tour begins at 50, and this fact isn’t lost on George Archer. With his 50th birthday coming up Oct. 1, he will have the distinction of playing on both the regular PGA Tour and the senior tour in the same season.

This is not to say that Archer, who lives in Gilroy, is coasting through his last full season with the younger guys. He shot a three-under-par 69 Thursday in the first round of the Shearson Lehman Hutton Open at Torrey Pines.

The senior tour has become so attractive and so lucrative that many golfers can’t wait until they turn 50. Just when a man’s career on the regular tour is winding down, he gets a chance for a fresh start.

“This is something big for me to look forward to,” Archer said after his opening round. “I’ve been lucky to be able to keep playing, earn a little money and have some fun.

“I’ll take the summer off and do some fishing, then play about four more tournaments before I hit 50. I’ll be able to get in four or five senior events before the year is out, and I want to win one so I can play in the Tournament of Champions (at La Costa) next year.”

This is Archer’s 26th season on the PGA Tour--only Jack Nicklaus (28) and Ray Floyd (27) have been around longer--and he has felt for some time that there was room for a second tour. Nicklaus will be eligible for the senior tour in January, 1990; Floyd late in 1992.

“I used to think there should be two tours, like the two leagues in baseball,” Archer said. “Nobody dreamed that the senior tour would develop like it has, but actually, it’s a natural. Older people know all the names, and they’re watching golfers their own age. They can relate.”

Since joining the regular tour in 1964, Archer has won 13 tournaments and $1,830,991. His list of victories includes the 1969 Masters and the 1971 forerunner of this event, then called the Andy Williams San Diego Open.

“You’d think winning the Masters was the highlight of my career, but it wasn’t,” he said. “My biggest thrill was my first win, the Lucky International, because it was close to where I grew up in San Francisco. That was in ’65.

“Winning the Crosby in ’69 was a big thrill, too. When I was a kid, I saw it on TV and said to myself, ‘Some day I want to play in that tournament.’ Then to win it was something that will always be special to me.”

Archer’s most memorable achievement, one that put his name in the PGA record book, was his total of 94 putts for four rounds in the 1980 Heritage Classic in Hilton Head, S.C. (surprisingly, he didn’t win).

“I think that record will stand awhile,” Archer said. “I’ll probably be dead a long time before anybody breaks it. Do you realize that’s an average of just 23 1/2 putts per round?

“The course had small greens, or I couldn’t have done it. Still, nobody has done it since.”

Putting never has been a problem for Archer, who has built a reputation as one of the best in the business on the greens.

“I certainly can’t gripe about my putting today,” he said. “In fact, I liked my whole round (35-34). I had four birdies, and my only bogey was on the first hole.

“I hit a good drive on No. 1, but my iron hooked into a trap. I don’t know if there was mud on the ball or not, but it didn’t act right. There was a lot of mud on that hole. They ruined some places on the course with the sprinklers.”

Playing in a threesome with George Cadle and Buddy Gardner, Archer took 4 hours 20 minutes to tour the South Course. He said this was too long, and blamed it on the fact that many younger golfers today pattern their games after the slow-playing Nicklaus.

“Nicklaus would take forever, and kids would copy him,” Archer said. “Why wouldn’t they copy the greatest player in the world? He’s to golf what Babe Ruth was to baseball.

“But it’s a bad thing that they’ve done. Guys come out of college and play so darn slow, it’s ridiculous. Now some of the (LPGA players) take five minutes to line up chip shots. It’s driving me nuts.”

Should the PGA have done something about Nicklaus’ deliberate tactics?

“Absolutely,” Archer said. “But it’s pretty hard to tell the world’s greatest player how to play.”