Low Scores Provide Low Point

By JIM MURRAY

Feb. 20, 1994 12 AM PT

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INDIAN WELLS — Some years ago, when the Palm Springs Open was new on the tour and staged for the first time at Thunderbird, the great Ben Hogan was in the field. At the end of a round, he looked up at the leader board. A golfer named Bo Wininger had shot a 61. So had a pro named Chandler Harper.

Ben studied it in distaste, then turned to a reporter and gritted his teeth. “What in the world,” he wondered, “am I doing on a golf course where guys shoot 61s?!”

It wasn’t golf. It was a pool table with flags in it. A bowling alley with sand traps.

Hogan wanted a course where the fairways were so narrow you had to proceed down them single file. Where there were trees on the right, water on the left (preferably the Pacific Ocean), and greens so slick you could skate on them and if you marked your ball, the marker slid. Hogan wanted courses named “The Blue Monster,” or “The Hall of Horrors,” or “Three-Putt Acres.” If a course was named “Hogan’s Alley,” you knew you’d never break 100 on it.

You wonder what Hogan would think of the 35th annual Bob Hope Chrysler Classic down here this week, which has evolved out of that tournament Hogan quit playing in long ago.

At the close of business here Saturday night, one guy had shot 61, two guys had shot 62s and another had shot a 63. Four had shot 64s and eight guys shot 65s. Almost everybody had shot 66s. You had to shoot five under to make the cut. Two guys made holes in one. Hogan would need smelling salts.

These courses are defenseless. They are like Paris surrounded by Germans. London in the blitz. You get a mental picture of them as a fighter on the ropes with his legs rubbery, his mouthpiece falling out, his eye cut, his nose bleeding and the crowd shouting “Stop it!”

You wonder why they don’t make these guys play left-handed or blindfolded to even things up a little bit. Make the holes smaller, the tees muddy. Make them putt on one leg. Outlaw drivers called the Big Bertha or Boom Boom or Killer Whale. Don’t just outlaw square grooves, outlaw any grooves. Make the club face as slippery as a spatula. Make them play in leather heels. No cleats.

This is a very long week for guys like me, who are big fans of double bogeys and out-of-bounds bounces and for whom the happiest sound in the world is the splash of a ball in the water by a guy who is two under par.

But there’s no relief in sight. The assault continues. The courses are being reduced to rubble. The bogey is obsolete. Matter of fact, so is par. A guy makes par, he throws his club. You and I make par, we throw our hat in the air and the ball into the gallery. These guys curse and kick the ball-washer. Par won’t even get you the honors on the next tee.

Ben Crenshaw restored our faith in the game a little bit. In all this miasma of birdies, eagles, 61s, 62s, Ben weighed in with a--are you ready for this?--13 on a hole Friday. Now that--God bless him!--is an octuple bogey! I’ve made lots of them. Arnold Palmer once made a 12 at Rancho Park and, later, when asked what happened, responded “I missed a short putt for an 11.” Well, Ben two-putted for a 13.

It’s nice to know there’s a hole in the desert you can make 13 on. Usually, it takes five holes here to run up 13.

It’s kind of cheering. The course is not the canvasback it appears. You picture it like Rocky, getting off the canvas and fighting back, landing haymakers of its own.

Hogan was right. The courses are pushovers for the registered Who’s-Hes? of the game. But they won’t take any nonsense from the Who’s-Whos.

Tom Kite won this thing last year with an otherworldly 35 under par. This year he managed two under and is out of the tournament.

Meanwhile, the leader board is as anonymous as a motel registry. These guys are all phantoms of this opera. They should play in masks. For example, one of the leaders is named Stankowski. You should win a car if you know his first name or can pick him out of a crowd. He has never won a tournament, but he shot 67-66-69-68 here.

For the most part, this was the No-Name Open. But even then, you felt order would be restored. The old lions of the tour would come in here and eventually say to the upstarts, “Very nice, fellows, but you really don’t belong here.”

Scott Hoch is not your basic Raymond Floyd-Lee Trevino-Tom Watson-Hale Irwin contemporary but he’s been out of qualifying school for over a decade and he doesn’t wear an earring or tap into the latest in rap albums or even wear a goatee. He’s about as Establishment as you have in this field, and he gave the kids a lesson in keeping the wheels on Friday and Saturday after his flashy second-round 62.

Hoch knows a patsy golf course when he sets foot on it and he treated Bermuda Dunes with the disrespect it deserved Saturday, when, on the 18th hole, he hit his second shot with a driver.

Now, ordinarily, you hit a driver only when the ball has a wooden peg under it. You’re not going to hit fairway drivers on Open courses, but Hoch blistered his second shot to the back of the green on the par-five 18th so that a birdie was not only easy but inevitable.

Hoch’s second 66 of the tournament left him four shots ahead after Saturday’s fourth round. Now, a four-shot lead going into a final round in most tournaments would mean an automatic trophy for most players--especially veterans who know how to smuggle a four-shot lead into the clubhouse.

But a four-shot lead in this tournament is like being tied in most others. There are still 62s lurking out there. This tournament is like wild-card poker--not even a full house or four of a kind is safe. Twenty-four under is leading. But shaking the ribbon clerks out of this high-limit deuces-wild game is not as easy as it is in a British Open. It’s hard to play golf looking over your shoulder. On these courses, you have to look over both shoulders. Pebble Beach, it ain’t.

It’s still no place for Hogan.

Bob Hope Scores

72-hole scores from the $1.1-million Bob Hope Chrysler Classic at Indian Wells

* LEADERSPlayer: Score

Hoch 66-62-70-66--264

Glasson 70-66-66-66--268

Huston 66-68-66-68--268

Gallagher 66-67-74-62--269

Clearwater 67-64-70-68--269

Clements 67-69-61-72--269

Lietzke 68-69-65-67--269

Stankowski 67-66-69-68--270