GOLF / THE PLAYERS CHAMPIONSHIP : Pavin Leads at 66, 10 Shots Better Than Nicklaus

When Jack Nicklaus teed off Thursday in the first round of the Players Championship, the electronic scoreboard flashed his name: NCKLS JCK.

Perhaps it was just as well if some of the younger folks in the good-sized gallery at the TPC at Sawgrass didn’t figure out the hieroglyphics. After all, it has been nine years since he won his last tour event, the 1986 Masters, and 17 since he won his third Players Championship.

Arguably the greatest golfer who ever played the game, the man with 20 major championships struggled to a four-over-par 76--10 strokes behind first-day leader Corey Pavin, the Nissan L.A. Open winner.

It wasn’t so much the score, it was the way it happened. Once one of the longest, straightest drivers, Nicklaus was consistently 30 to 40 yards short of the young Spaniard, Masters champion Jose Maria Olazabal. When his tee shots missed the fairway, his shots from the rough more often found a bunker than the green.

The worst scenario occurred on the 162-yard third hole, where his tee shot flew over the green and skittered across a cart path 20 yards deep onto a bed of pine needles. His first chip came up short. So did his woefully weak second. He finally reached the putting surface in four and made a one-putt double bogey.

Frustrated by swirling winds, hesitant with his shots and thicker around the waist than a few years back, Nicklaus looked like a 55-year-old golfer, which he is.

Watching him was like watching Willie Mays unable to catch up with a routine fly, Johnny Unitas throwing a wobbly interception, Richard Petty being lapped. Not a pretty sight.

The 6,896-yard TPC course that Pete Dye laid out through the pines and palms on the sand hills of northern Florida has never been kind to Nicklaus. Although he is the only three-time winner of the tournament, he scored all of his victories before it was moved here in 1982.

The Golden Bear has missed the cut four of the last five times he has entered the Players Championship and probably will miss it again this weekend. He is in a 14-way tie for 83rd place.

Pavin, 20 years Nicklaus’ junior, shot a 32-34--66 in what he called “the best round I’ve had here since the 1983 tour school.”

A hot putter--he made four putts of 20 feet or more and seven of 12 feet or more--helped the former UCLA All-American shoot the low round, but he said his fairway play contributed to his putting success.

“Even when I missed greens, I left myself fairly easy up and downs,” he said.

One shot back with a 35-32--67 is Gene Sauers. A group of five at 69 includes Bernhard Langer, Larry Mize, Payne Stewart and Lee Janzen, all winners of major championships, along with Steve Stricker of Edgerton, Wis., whose wife, Nicki, is his caddie.

For the sadistically inclined, there were 41 balls hit into the lake surrounding the island green at No. 17. Late in the day, when the wind was strong enough to blow Tom Watson’s cap into the water, Mark O’Meara and Nick Faldo each hit into the water twice for quadruple-bogey 7s. And each finished with an 80.