GOLF / DINAH SHORE TOURNAMENT : Spencer-Devlin (69) Stays Cool in the Wind

All in all, it was a pretty fine day Thursday for Muffin Spencer-Devlin, tour existentialist, in the first round of the Nabisco Dinah Shore golf tournament at Mission Hills.

Let’s see. She saw a rainbow, she shot 69 to share the first-day lead and she played an entire round without getting fined for conduct unbecoming a player.

Spencer-Devlin said she has been working on her mental approach to the game the last couple of years and on a scale of one to 10, she gave herself a nine for her mental game Thursday.

Why nine?

“There were no thrown clubs,” she said. “There wasn’t a single expletive, either.”

There you have it, a real success story for Spencer-Devlin, whose three-under-par score on an often windy, sometimes rainy, seldom sunny day left her tied with Nanci Bowen and Penny Hammel.

It was a fine day for golf if you happened to be a wind sock. Spencer-Devlin, Bowen and Hammel had the only scores in the 60s, but 22 of the 120 players in the field shot 80 or worse, among them three-time champion Amy Alcott, who had an 81.

Helen Alfredsson, who won here in 1993, birdied the first two holes and still wound up shooting 86.

Spencer-Devlin was in the third group off the first tee. Golfers with later tee times were affected the most by the worsening conditions.

Laura Davies, who started more than four hours later, shot 75. Beth Daniel shot 77 and defending champion Donna Andrews had a 76.

Hammel eagled the par-five 11th to tie for the lead, fell back with a bogey at the 15th, but closed with a birdie.

Dawn Coe-Jones, who leads a group of five at 71, said she couldn’t recall a colder or windier day at Mission Hills.

“This golf course is difficult on a calm day,” she said.

Maybe, but for Muffin, it was a piece of cake.

In her previous 16 years on the LPGA tour, Spencer-Devlin has proved to be one of its more colorful performers, throwing her weight behind such issues as saving the whales, reincarnation, life in outer space and the best place for bungee jumping.

Since 1979, when she joined the tour as a 25-year-old and won $2,527, she has been fined for conduct unbecoming a player at least once every year except 1993, when she had wagered a friend that she could make it through a whole year fine-free.

With what she has paid in fines, they could add a wing to the LPGA office. But at 41, she may be mellowing. Spencer-Devlin got one conduct-unbecoming fine last year and has only one this year, in the season-opener at Orlando.

“I expect not to have another,” she said, adding that club-throwing isn’t the problem.

“Only once have I thrown a club,” she said. “That’s not my style. My style is crude and rude words.”

The weather got that way by the time Spencer-Devlin reached the 17th. The wind abruptly changed directions and was blowing back from the green.

Or, according to Spencer-Devlin, “booming in our faces.”

On the par-five 18th, Spencer-Devlin hit driver, three-wood, four-wood and three-iron to 2 1/2 feet away in a gale. It was sort of humorous, she thought.

“I just hit every club in my bag to get home,” she said.

Bowen, from Georgia, had never played the Mission Hills course before. In fact, the only time she had seen Mission Hills was when she caddied for a friend in the LPGA qualifying tournament two years ago. But considering her success, she may want to play it more often.

“I enjoy playing difficult golf courses,” she said.

And she played it so well that she didn’t have a bogey and needed only 30 putts.