GOLF / THOMAS BONK : Burned Out Price Is Toasted Mentally

What? Nick Price is suffering from “burnout?” As it turns out, the world’s top-rated golfer has discovered the price of success.

Last year, Price won five PGA Tour events, including the PGA Championship, bagged his first British Open title and found himself in a two-year stretch that included 17 victories worldwide.

Now, Price is toasted mentally. He is taking three weeks off to spend time with his family in Jupiter, Fla., and won’t play again until the Colonial at the end of the month.

“I’ve had a lot on my mind,” he said. “I just need a little bit of down time and focus on the U.S. Open. Golf is not right at the top of my priorities right now. I just need to let the urge build up to play again.”

Price missed the cut in two of his last three events, including a disappointing Masters.

“I’ve been in the game long enough to know there are peaks and troughs,” he said. “I’m in a trough right now.”

Price said there’s nothing technically wrong with his game and that he can get ready for the U.S. Open in mid-June by playing the Colonial, the Memorial and the Kemper Open the three weeks before Shinnecock.

Price hopes he feels in the Open the way he did when he won his last major title, the 1994 PGA Championship at Southern Hills in Tulsa. He put up rounds of 67-65-70-67 for an 11-under-par 269, the lowest 72-hole score in PGA Championship history, breaking Bobby Nichols’ 271 in 1964.

“That was the ultimate for me,” he said. “Right from the opening nine holes, I had control. . . . It was almost a euphoric situation to be in. You feel like as long as you don’t fall down and break a leg, you’re going to win.”

No matter how he plays until then, Price still is going to be the defending champion at the 77th PGA Championship, Aug. 10-13 at Riviera.

Price may note a quirk of history: Since 1958, when the format of the PGA Championship was changed from match play to stroke play, no one has successfully defended his title.

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Nick knock, who’s there? Why, it’s Payne Stewart. Price said he was happy for Stewart, who ended a four-year winless streak with a victory at last week’s Shell Houston Open.

Said Price: “Payne has been great for golf . . . whether you like knickers or not.”

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Reading list: Anyone wanting to know Riviera better before the PGA Championship should read “The Riviera Country Club, A Definitive History,” a new book by club historian Geoff Shackelford.

Shackelford recounts how Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford became interested in golf when Riviera opened in 1927. Fairbanks was so concerned that golfers at Riviera weren’t shooting low enough scores that he personally offered a $1,000 purse to pros who could beat par in three days of play before the 1928 L.A. Open at El Caballero.

Fairbanks also put up $1,000 of the $10,000 purse for the first L.A. Open that was played at Riviera in 1928.

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Not as in joke: After his collapse in the Shell Houston Open, when he blew a six-shot lead with seven holes to go and lost to Stewart in a playoff, Scott Hoch refused to go to the interview room. Reporters caught up with him in the parking lot.

Hoch told them his name “rhymes with choke,” which is what some writers said after Hoch blew a 22-inch putt in a playoff at the 1989 Masters and eventually lost to Nick Faldo.

Said Hoch: “No matter what you write, it’s going to hurt less than what I feel right now.”

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Golf Notes

Don Johnson, Joe Pesci, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., Joe Mantegna, Richard Roundtree, Jason Bateman and others are expected to play in the Kick-Start Classic Celebrity-Am to be played May 17 at Montebello Country Club. The event benefits the American Cancer Society. Details: (818) 294-9312. . . . Jim Harrick headlines a group of college basketball coaches that includes Jim Boeheim, Denny Crum, Jim Calhoun and Seth Greenberg in the Community Benefit golf classic at Dayton Valley Country Club near Carson City, Nev., and the Edgewood Tahoe golf course at South Lake Tahoe. The event benefits Partners in Education, a nonprofit agency for study aids and classroom supplies for schoolchildren.

The PGA Tour Charities and the PGA Tour Championship donated $25,000 to the Oklahoma County Chapter of the American Red Cross to help with disaster relief in Oklahoma City. . . . Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino, Raymond Floyd and Chi Chi Rodriguez, and celebrities Clint Eastwood, Michael Douglas, Jack Nicholson and Sylvester Stallone will play in the $1-million Lexus Challenge, Dec. 13-17, at La Quinta’s Citrus Course. The event benefits the prevention of child abuse and neglect.

The Tucson Conquistadores said 1996 will be the last year of Northern Telcom’s sponsorship of the Tucson stop on the PGA Tour. Kmart is expected to drop its sponsorship of the Greater Greensboro Open after next year’s event. . . . A public meeting to discuss rules, fees and policies of the Los Angeles County Parks and Recreation Commission will be held at 1 p.m. Wednesday at Mountain Meadows golf course in Pomona.