Stephenson Still Coming to Grips With Comeback : Golf: She is in final stages of recovery from mugging that left finger permanently crooked.

Jan Stephenson, wearing no jewelry but the most modest of earrings, held up her crooked left ring finger, a finger that will not straighten.

“A month ago, this was purple and out to here,” she said. “Two months ago, it was still broken. There were so many fine bones, all put back together like a jigsaw puzzle, and every time I hit balls, the vibrations broke them again.”

Stephenson doesn’t ask your sympathy for the finger, which required surgery after a mugger twisted and splintered it to steal her wedding ring in a Miami parking lot last January.

She is, she hopes, in the final stages of recovering, although she no longer can grip the club firmly with the finger, and she no longer feels at ease wearing jewelry even to a party with valet parking.

In 17 years on the LPGA tour, Stephenson has won 16 tournaments and more than $1.8 million.

This year, she has missed 19 tournaments and been in the money in only seven, with winnings of $13,933.

She returned to the tour Thursday at Los Coyotes Country Club after skipping the past four tournaments, her latest concession to the trauma of the injury. Doctors tell her now that she rushed it to come back after missing 11 tournaments. In the 11 events she has played, Stephenson missed the cut twice and had only three top-20 finishes.

She looked like the Jan Stephenson of old on the front nine Thursday, full of grace as always and with three birdies and a bogey on the seventh, she made the turn at two-under.

But two bogeys and a double bogey on the back nine left her with a two-over 74, six shots behind leaders Janet Anderson and Cathy Morse.

Stephenson blamed her trouble not on the finger, but on not feeling well.

Her month off was a tangle of airline connections and public appearances that has left her drained. Stephenson, who said she showed up for one speaking engagement with laryngitis, saw doctors Wednesday and confessed to having “a touch of bronchitis” Thursday.

“I’m on antibiotics,” she said. “I got so tired on the back nine. But I hit the ball very well on the front.”

She found herself in a particular fix on the 17th hole. After a six on the par-four 15th, she tried to make up ground on the dogleg 17th. Instead, her tee shot landed high on a hill to the right of the fairway, her ball about 10 feet behind a twin-trunked tree.

But Stephenson recovered nicely, with a third shot that left her with about a five-foot putt to save par.

“I made an incredible par there,” she said, laughing.

Stephenson’s difficult year is drawing to a close. And it has been not only a difficult year, but a heart-wrenching two years during which she lost her father, Frank Stephenson, and her caddie, Rick White, both to cancer.

After this tournament, she will play at Tallahassee, Fla., in two weeks, ending her season, perhaps mercifully.

The final three tournaments of the year are by qualification, and Stephenson, for once, does not have the credentials.

For now, she has two more tournaments.

“I’m not expecting miracles,” Stephenson said. “I’m enjoying playing. Usually I’m happy when I’m playing well. If something good happens tomorrow. . . . “

If something good happens tomorrow, you could see Stephenson on the leader board again. If not. . . .

“I have high hopes for next year,” she said. “I’m going to do everything the doctors tell me to. I’ll be ready to go.”