GOLF ROUNDUP : Lopez Part of a 10-Player Logjam in LPGA Championship

Ten players, including Hall of Famers Nancy Lopez and Patty Sheehan, shot three-under-par 68s Thursday to create a crowd atop the leader board after the opening round of the LPGA Championship at Bethesda, Md.

The large group included Trish Johnson, the leading money-winner on the tour this year. Six others were one shot back, and eight shot 70s.

“It’s getting harder and harder to win out here these days,” Lopez said. “You have to play great golf because so many players are playing so well.”

Others at 68 were Japan’s Hiromi Kobayashi, Cathy Johnston-Forbes, Switzerland’s Evelyn Orley, Scotland’s Pamela Wright, Cindy Rarick, Barb Bunkowsky and Joan Pitcock.

Lopez, vying for her fourth LPGA Championship, was chugging along at par through 11 holes when she made a 40-foot putt for an eagle on 12. She birdied the next two holes to go four under, but missed a four-foot putt on 16 and took a bogey.

JoAnne Carner, bidding for her 43rd career victory at 54, was in the group at 69.

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Dudley Hart, needing only 11 putts on the back nine, shot an opening 66 and capitalized on a bogey-bogey finish by Tom Kite for a one-stroke lead in the Buick Classic at Harrison, N.Y.

Kite’s 5-6 finish dropped him from a share of the lead to a tie for third behind Brandel Chamblee, who had a four-under-par 67.

“A dismal finish,” Kite said.

The field had to contend with tricky, shifting winds that gusted to 35 m.p.h. on the Westchester Country Club course. The wind, hills, deep rough and fast greens allowed only eight of the 156 starters to shoot in the 60s and produced some soaring scores.

Craig Thomas, who got into the field as a PGA sectional qualifier, slashed his way to a 92, including 49 over the back nine.

For more prominent names, there were Paul Azinger and the two men he beat with a 72nd-hole birdie from a bunker last week, Payne Stewart and Corey Pavin. Pavin shot 73, Stewart 74 and Azinger 75.

Kite fell back into a tie at 68 with Bob Tway. Lee Janzen, Brad Faxon, Duffy Waldorf and Fred Funk were at 69.

Hart, yet to win in three years on the tour, made his big move with a four-under 31 on the back nine.