GOLF SENIOR TOURNAMENT AT INDIAN WELLS : To Trevino’s Joy, He Never Walks Alone

Sometimes it pays to listen to your caddy.

Lee Trevino paid attention to his longtime bag-toter, Herman Mitchell, and, to the surprise of almost nobody, is the leader after the first round of the $400,000 Vintage Invitational.

Trevino, getting a big assist from Mitchell on the final hole, birdied five of the last six holes Friday at the Vintage Club to shoot a six-under-par 66 and take a one-stroke lead.

A shot behind in the 54-hole tournament are Mike Hill, who is No. 2 on the money list; Don Massengale, and former San Francisco 49er quarterback John Brodie. The big surprise is Brodie, who is no longer eligible for the tour and needs a special invitation to play.

Four more, including Gary Player, were at 68, and five others, including Mike Hill’s brother, Dave, and Bruce Crampton, were at 69. In the field of 54, there were 28 players under par.

When Brodie, 56, first qualified for the senior tour, par shooters finished in the top 15. “Par (is nothing) now,” he said. “That’s how this tour has progressed.”

Trevino came to the 503-yard, par-five 18th on the warm, windless day needing a birdie to take the lead. A long hitter such as Trevino can reach the green in two, but he pulled his drive into the rough behind a tree.

In a discussion with Mitchell, who has been his caddy since 1977, Trevino, as a left-to-right player, said he thought he could play a three-wood and slice it around the tree.

“It ain’t no shot,” Mitchell insisted.

Trevino didn’t seem convinced. “Do what you want,” Mitchell said, “but it ain’t the shot.”

Finally, Trevino took out the three-wood, hooked the ball around the tree and landed in the light rough 80 yards from the green. A sand wedge and an eight-foot putt put Trevino on top. He said: “Herman was right.”

Trevino has played 10 rounds on the tour this year and has been under par in every one. He credited his putting.

“I’m rolling the ball so well,” he said, “it’s hard to believe. It may have seemed that I was losing it on the front side, but the ball was going where I was looking. That’s what tells you whether you’re still hot. I was just reading them wrong--not hitting them wrong.”

Trevino said the turning point in his round came on the 528-yard ninth, a hole he can reach in two shots.

On his second shot, Trevino hit a three-wood 253 yards, the ball settling about 15 feet above the hole. He barely missed an eagle.

“That’s another putt I read wrong,” he said.

“The front nine here is several shots tougher than the back nine. I knew that if I was going to get into the battle, I had to get bolder.”

It wasn’t until the 13th that the boldness paid off. With putts of 15, 30, three and five feet, he birdied four in a row.

This answered the question posed by Don Bies, one of the early finishers with a 68, and echoed by others: “What’s Lee doing?”

Trevino, in his first senior season, leads the tour in two categories that are usually not compatible--greens in regulation and putting. Ordinarily, the leader of one of those statistics is not in the top 10 of the other. But Trevino has hit 80% of the greens in regulation and has averaged only 1.65 putts.

“That’s what I mean when I say I’m on a roll with the putter,” he said. “I expect them all to go in.”

The leader in putting on the regular PGA Tour is Mike Reid with a 1.70 average, but he is not in the top 10 in greens in regulation. Bobby Wadkins leads that category with 74.4% but is not in the top 10 in putting.

Meanwhile, George Archer (72), Orville Moody (76) and defending champion Miller Barber (73) all struggled because of physical ailments. Bob Charles, the leading money-winner the last two years on the Senior Tour, has a different problem.

“I am in the finest physical condition of my life,” said the left-hander from New Zealand, who had a 72.

“My problem is that they legislated against the grip on my putter. It’s the one I used for 30 years, and now it’s outlawed. I can’t find one I like.”

Senior Golf Notes

With the baseball lockout, George Brett of the Kansas City Royals found temporary employment. He caddied during the two rounds of the pro-am for Larry Ziegler. “I’m trying to get him back in baseball,” laughed Ziegler, who shot a 68. “I pay a caddy $12 a round. He was getting $58 a day for meal money.”

Skip Whitted, tournament director of the Ojai senior tournament, has been given a tentative date in 1991 for the week after the Vintage. Ojai will not hold a tournament this fall. . . . The Centinela Hospital Medical Center tournament at Rancho Park on the first weekend in November will take the Ojai spot on the tour. . . . The Vintage had been a 72-hole tournament until this year.

Lee Trevino, despite his problem reading the greens on the front nine, needed only 28 putts, mainly because he one-putted the last six holes. He reached 15 of the 18 greens in regulation. . . . John Brodie, who tried the regular tour during the off-season when he was playing for the 49ers, had to finish in the top 31 to be eligible to continue on the fast-growing senior tour. But he had what he called a horrible year and was 70th. “At 56, I can’t see going out to qualify on Mondays,” he said. “So, I’ll play only when my friends invite me. I can live with that.”