LPGA AT LOS COYOTES : Hot Putter Gives Her Fresh Start

If not the years, and there are 38 of them on the scorecard now, the numbers were beginning to catch up with Hollis Stacy.

A 59th-place finish at the Northgate Computer Classic in late August.

A 58th-place finish at the Ping-Cellular One Golf Championship in early September.

A 78 in the first round of last week’s Safeco Classic.

Trudging into the clubhouse with that six-over-par hanging over her head, Stacy began commiserating with Dana Lofland, also miserable in the company of a big, bad 78.

“She was looking into changing her plane ticket,” Stacy says. “We were both at 78 and she’s saying, ‘We’re going home after tomorrow.’ ”

Out of desperation, Stacy reached out to an old friend, Judy Dickinson.

She grabbed one of Dickinson’s putters.

“Judy’s always carrying three or four putters with her,” Stacy says. “I spotted her on the putting green, looking them over. ‘I know there has to be a hot putter among these.’

“So she took one and gave me the pick of the others.”

Stacy smiles, giving away the punch line.

“She blew it.”

With Dickinson’s reject, Stacy went out the next day and broke Dickinson’s course record. But that was merely the subplot. Stacy also tied the LPGA record for the lowest round in the history of the LPGA--62--to go where only Mickey Wright (1964), Vicki Fergon (1984) and Laura Davies (1991) had gone before.

Sixty-two.

Ten under par.

Ten birdies, including one on the first hole and one on the third. In the groove, right from the start.

“And that just carried me,” Stacy says. “I made every putt I tried after that.”

Dickinson watched her equipment perform this delicate surgery and waited until the end of the tournament before asking for it back.

But ask she did.

“It’s her putter,” says Stacy, in complete and total understanding of the attachment. “It’s like it’s her child.”

That didn’t, however, stop Stacy from adopting a twin. She carried an exact duplicate around with her for 18 holes at Los Coyotes Country Club Thursday and the results were half as good, though clearly good enough.

Five strokes under at 67 and one stroke back after the first round of the Los Coyotes LPGA Classic.

This sudden autumnal lift in Stacy’s game could hardly have been better timed. She placed fifth in the Safeco Classic--and she’s done that only two other times this year. Here, she is tied for second--and after 17 victories between 1974 and 1985, she has won only one tournament in the last seven years.

With her ranking stalled in the 40s, and her personal chronology headed there, Stacy had begun to consider outside interests and other career options. Very recently, for instance, she became a designing woman. The new Black Hawk Golf Course in Austin, Tex., is the product of Stacy’s imagination, from blueprint to 18th green.

“It was fun,” Stacy says. “Designing a golf course is something I’ve always wanted to do.

“We moved 300,000 cubic yards of dirt, put in four lakes and some gently rolling hills. There are no railroad ties. We have wide fairways, bent greens, targets everywhere. It’s a fun course to play.”

Stacy is already planning another, to be constructed in Atlanta. And after Atlanta, there will be another. Stacy believes female pros make the best public golf-course architects--”The way we hit the ball is about the same as the average man,” she says--and she believes she has a knack for it.

Someday, she would like to do it full-time.

In truth, Stacy is half-surprised she isn’t doing it already. Her gradual fade-out from the tour was supposed to be in full swing in 1992, but those plans were sketched before the recession hit. New community golf courses just don’t seem to have as much demand when the automobile plant down the road shuts down.

So Stacy has been forced to keep playing. “A blessing in disguise,” she says. “I’ve been playing more this year, and it’s given my game a new lease on life.”

Stick around long enough and, lo and behold, Stacy now finds herself in the middle of real, in-the-flesh women’s golfing boom. After the lean years of the late 1980s, when Chi Chi Rodriguez and the rest of the swashbuckling seniors were threatening to bury the LPGA, Stacy wondered if she’d ever see the day.

But today, half of the LPGA’s 40 tournaments are televised and prize money has been increased to nearly $21 million. The influx of new stars--power-hitting Michelle McGann, already-rich rookie Brandie Burton, Player-of-the-Year contenders Dottie Mochrie and Danielle Ammaccapane--has been a boon to the new popularity, but so have a handful of dynamic performances by the old guard.

Patty Sheehan’s scintillating playoff victory at the U.S. Open. “Incredible,” Stacy says. “And in prime time. That gave us a lot of great exposure.”

Betsy King’s four sub-70 rounds at the Mazda LPGA Championship, making her the first player--man or woman--to record such a string in a major tournament.

And, no small feat, Stacy’s miraculous 62.

“We’ve been playing some great golf,” Stacy says, with no small amount of pride. “We have some rising stars, everybody’s excited about our new commissioner (Charles Mechem), there’s just a much more positive feeling overall. We went through a period two years ago that was really tough. But this is wonderful now.”

So good, in fact, that Stacy just might hang around awhile.

Building golf courses can wait.

Stacy figures there are still a few more to break down.