1995 / 77th PGA RIVIERA : If at First You Don’t Succeed, You’re in Very Big Trouble . . . : Golf: Without eagle or birdie on No. 1 at Riviera, players in a hole right from start.

It’s Acapulco without water, and the divers wear spikes, colorful pants and tricked-up shirts that resemble billboards. They stand on the cliff, test the wind, close their eyes, then open them to view the green tableau below. They swing, taking a figurative plunge into the Riviera Country Club course and the 77th PGA Championship. It’s the first hole, and its tee is both a signature and the beginning of a 503-yard illusion.

It’s a siren song, an Eve with an apple luring you into doing something that perhaps you shouldn’t.

The idea is to hit your tee shot 275 yards onto a fairway 29 paces wide, then use a long iron or fairway wood to finish off the next 228 yards, give or take a few feet for your putter.

Par is five, but that’s only a suggestion. If you don’t get a birdie or an eagle, you’re playing from behind all day long.

“It’s basically a par four,” said Jay Haas, who eagled the hole with a 25-foot putt. “It’s downhill, and you’re pumped up. My second shot was only 208 yards. My second on No. 2 [a hole 40 yards shorter] was 224.”

He used the same club, a driver, off the tee on both holes. Go figure.

There were 72 birdies on the tournament’s first hole from 150 golfers in Thursday’s first round. No. 1 giveth.

There were six eagles, including one by first-round leader Michael Bradley. Sometimes, it giveth a lot.

“I can remember pictures and television of [Ben] Hogan standing on that first tee. It’s a famous hole and a famous tee,” said Frank Nobilo, who saw the images as a boy in New Zealand.

He eagled the hole Thursday in his first competitive round on the course, then decided he had done something special.

“The problem is that when you look down the fairway, it’s distorted. It seems so small,” Nobilo said. “You always want to get off to a good start at a tournament, or on a course, but you don’t want to let the hole lure you into doing something you shouldn’t do.”

Like pulling your tee shot or, worse, just plain hooking it into Couples Courts. They are the tennis courts Fred Couples visited twice with tee shots in the Los Angeles Open, and they are extended this week by tents in which Bob will sell you a PGA shirt for $69, Earl will pour you a Pepsi for $2.50 and Michelle will treat you for faintness after you realize what you’ve just spent. There’s also an automated teller machine so you can do it again.

Give the courts a wide berth, but not so wide that you hit your tee shot right. When trees that border the fairway cease being decorative, the stroke meter runs up fast.

And, yes, there is the infamous barranca--which is a pretentious ditch--at 320 yards, just so John Daly has to lay up. He used a four-iron off the tee Thursday, which still didn’t keep him from a birdie on the hole.

Get through that, and all you have to deal with is a kidney-shaped green, with a bunker in its belly and the cup only 10 paces away.

No problem.

“It’s the perfect hole to get off to a good start,” said Don Pooley, who didn’t Thursday, making one of the four bogeys on No. 1.

“I just butchered it, and after I did, I started talking to myself. I mean, when you finish, there are still 71 holes left to play, but you feel like you’re behind because you should make birdie on No. 1.”

Pooley did about the only thing that can get you in trouble onNo. 1--hit a bad tee shot. In this case, it was right, and his second shot came out of the trees, the third went into a bunker in front of the green, and a blast and two putts--one missed from two feet--made six.

“You look at somebody like [Greg] Norman,” Pooley said. “He birdies the first three holes, and I’m four behind before we’ve hardly started. That’s a lot to make up.”

Pooley made it back to even par, seven shots behind the leaders, all of whom made birdie or better on No. 1.

Greg Kraft wasn’t that lucky. He played the hole about as poorly as you can play it and retain professional status--tee shot left, then a 100-yard chunk of a shot that was the result of an argument lost to the kikuyu rough. The ball went into a bunker 93 yards from the pin that nobody else visited. A shot that missed the green, one that hit it and two putts made six, and put Kraft with Pooley--as a bogeyman, down, and in Kraft’s case, probably out.