Davis, Always Hard to Figure, Takes Lead : Skating: Defending champion pulls another surprise, outperforming Eldredge in short program.

There’s always a good reason to think Scott Davis won’t win the U.S. men’s figure skating championship.

In 1993, he was coming off a fourth-place finish the previous year. He won.

In 1994, he was supposed to lose to four-time champion Brian Boitano, who had been reinstated as an amateur. He won.

This year, Davis has been hampered by a stress fracture in his back and brittle confidence, while top rival Todd Eldredge has been skating well. The winner won’t be decided until Saturday, but Davis took the lead Wednesday by performing the best short program, which counts for one-third of the final score.

Davis, who is from Great Falls, Mont., and trains in Colorado Springs, skated an energetic routine that drew rhythmic applause from the 7,813 fans at the Providence Civic Center. His 2-minute 40-second routine was ranked first by five of the nine judges; the other four gave the edge to Eldredge, the 1990 and ’91 champion.

“It seems every year I go into nationals as the defending champion but the underdog as well,” Davis said. “It’s kind of worked for me.”

Virtually everything worked well Wednesday for Davis, who skated to music from “Zorba the Greek.” He reduced the difficulty of his combination jump from a triple axel-triple toe loop to a triple axel-double toe loop, but that was his option and didn’t subject him to any deductions. The tougher jump might have gained him a tenth of a point here or there for difficulty and made his victory easier, but he had no regrets.

“I was really happy with the performance. I had had problems with it, so it’s a big confidence booster for me to be skating this well and to be leading after the short program,” he said.

Shepherd Clark, an Atlanta native who trains in South Dennis, Mass., stands third. A former national junior champion, Clark’s best finish at the senior level was sixth last year. He claimed ignorance about why he had been invited to the post-performance news conference, and brightened considerably when told it was because he was in the top three.

“I just wanted to skate my very, very best and whether it came out well or not, I was going to be happy with it,” he said.

Eldredge had planned the same triple-triple combination as Davis, and he also simplified it to a triple-double. However, Eldredge made one small but noticeable stumble as he launched into a spin, and that might have cost him the lead.

His marks included one 5.9 (out of 6.0) for the required elements--the mandatory jumps, spins and moves--but he also got a 5.6. Davis’ marks for both the required elements and for presentation were all 5.7s and 5.8s.

In ice dancing, Renee Roca and Gorsha Sur performed a spirited original dance to maintain their lead after two-thirds of the competition. Roca and Sur were awarded six 5.8s for composition and five 5.9s for presentation of their version of the Quickstep, and were placed first by all nine judges. The original dance is worth 30% of the final score.

Elizabeth Punsalan and Jerod Swallow of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., who won last year after Roca broke her wrist and withdrew from the competition, are second, ahead of Kate Robinson and Peter Breen of Colorado Springs. The free dance, which counts for 50% of each couple’s score, will be skated Friday.

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Skating Notes

Figure skating’s popularity boom, spurred by the attack on Nancy Kerrigan a year ago and the discovery of Tonya Harding’s involvement, is also evident on the corporate level. U.S. Figure Skating Assn. executives said corporate sponsorship this year amounts to $6.8 million, compared with about $2.5 million last year. “We have a whole new market out there that’s not just figure skating groupies,” said Jerry Lace, executive director of the USFSA.