Back on the Leader Board, 15 Years Later : Golf: Fitzsimons won the L.A. Open in 1975, but putting problems forced him off the tour in 1978. Now he opens with a 66 at Riviera.

He came virtually out of nowhere, withstood the challenge of golfing giants and won his first tournament.

At Riviera, no less.

In 1975, Pat Fitzsimons beat Tom Kite by four strokes and Jack Nicklaus by five in winning the Los Angeles Open. But before anybody got a chance to figure out who this new 24-year old star was, he faded away.

The pressure, he says, was a little too much. He finished 20th on the money list in 1975. He hasn’t finished higher than 105th since.

“I started pressing really early that next year, putting too much pressure on myself, trying too hard to match what I had done the year before and all of a sudden, I started to putt real poorly,” Fitzsimons said Thursday at the Riviera Country Club.

“I guess I got what you would call a real young case of the yips with the putter and at that point there wasn’t the sports psychologists and all the help that is available now. So I was pretty much stranded with some bad thoughts.”

In 1976, Fitzsimons struggled. Then he crumbled. And in 1978, he quit the tour.

Now, at 39, Fitzsimons, armed with a long-handled putter, a new stroke and a revitalized outlook, is giving the tour another try.

Thursday, after a 12-year absence from the tour, Fitzsimons’ name was posted on the leader board in the L.A. Open at Riviera. He shot a five-under-par 66 in the first round, three strokes off the lead.

He said he had putted well. He made five birdies with no bogeys. Now this was enjoyable. But golf wasn’t always a joy to Fitzsimons.

The reason he quit the tour in the first place is the reason it has taken him so long to return--his putting. He wasn’t enjoying the tour before his victory at Riviera, and had already decided to quit playing if he didn’t have a good year. That victory, however, allowed him to play freely for the rest of the year. But then came 1976.

“I overloaded on stress, and I had a stroke with the putter that was too wristy,” Fitzsimons said. “It was the stroke I grew up on, the stroke I won with (at Riviera). I used little muscles, like a symphony of small-motor movements.

“But when you overload on the stress part, you can misfire. And then when you get to the point when you have missed too many, you have a conditional response to that situation.

“You simply start seeing the failure when you get over a putt. No matter how hard you line up and think you’re going to make it, your mind has too much residue of seeing failure.”

After quitting the tour, Fitzsimons went back home to Oregon, and stayed in the game by working as a pro and playing in club tournaments in the Pacific Northwest. Once in a while, he would venture back to the L.A. Open at Riviera to play under an exemption, but he never came close to winning. The last time he played here was in 1983.

At the club level, Fitzsimons not only played well, but began to enjoy himself.

He started using the long-handled putter and changed his grip to one similar to Bernhard Langer’s, bracing his left wrist with his right hand.

He also began seeing a sports counselor to overcome his mental stumbling blocks.

Then in 1989, he went back to PGA qualifying school and got his tour card.

“It was kind of a lark, to see at what point I was playing and some of things I have learned, to see what my potential is,” Fitzsimons said.

“I’m not going to kid myself. I’m moving back up a league. It’s like I’m trying to hit major league pitching coming out of the minor leagues.

“It’s not easy, I was happy with my game today but I . . . don’t have a lot of false pretenses about it.”

Fitzsimons has played in three tournaments this year, but he has yet to make a cut. Still, he says he has seen improvement. And although he is reluctant to display too much enthusiasm for his comeback, he did concede that he would like to play regularly again.

“I would like to win again, I do have a green light again to play, and I would like to see how close I can come to my potential,” he said.

“I have never been that naive to think it would be easy.”

Not the way it was back in 1975.