Merten Handles Wind, Rain : Golf: She holds a one-shot lead at 71 after one round of the Tournament of Champions.

It was a different golf course from the one 40 tournament champions and LPGA Hall of Famers practiced on.

In rain and 15-20 m.p.h. wind that gusted to 30 m.p.h., Lauri Merten was the only player who broke par, shooting a one-under 71 to take the lead after the opening round of the first LPGA Tournament of Champions.

“It was good to see everybody else was having as much fun as I was,” said Merten, who won the U.S. Women’s Open in 1993. “The course played fair, but extremely difficult. It was hard to hit the greens in the wind and rain.”

Merten said the first-day scores might have been even higher if the tees on eight or nine holes of the Jack Nicklaus-designed North-South course at Grand Cypress Resort hadn’t been moved up.

“Yesterday, I felt like the course was set up a little too hard,” she said.

Betsy King, Donna Andrews, Patty Sheehan, Dottie Mochrie and Kris Tschetter shot par to trail Merten by one shot. Andrews, Mochrie and Tschetter bogeyed the last hole.

Helen Alfredsson, Laura Davies, Florence Descampe and Dawn Coe-Jones were two strokes behind at 73, followed by Barb Mucha, Judy Dickinson, Helen Dobson, Lis Awlater and Kelly Robbins at 74.

Nancy Lopez was among nine players at 75, and JoAnne Carner and Pat Bradley shot 77.

“It was tough out there, a day that demanded a lot of patience,” Andrews said. “You almost felt like, ‘Why did you play a practice round?’ The course played so differently than the day before.”

The $700,000 event, sponsored by Chrysler-Plymouth, is similar to the PGA Tour’s Tournament of Champions, now called the Mercedes Championships, and features winners from the 1992 and 1993 LPGA seasons, plus winners of the first two tournaments this year.

Merten missed seven greens and made the turn at two over par after missing six-foot putts to save par on Nos. 7 and 9. She birdied Nos. 10 and 14, then made a five-foot putt on No. 18 to lead.