1995 / 77th PGA RIVIERA : It Wasn’t Favorite’s Place This Week : Golf: Pavin falls apart on the back nine at Riviera and finishes with a 71-76, missing the cut by five shots.

Rotisserie golf geeks wept. UCLA fans stopped saying “Hang in there, Corey” by the 16th hole. Our hero himself knew he was doomed the moment he did a Sands of Nakajima and left his second shot in the fairway bunker on No. 15.

By then, Corey Pavin’s PGA Championship run was unofficially finished. The supposed surest thing in the field, Mr. Riviera , didn’t even make the cut Friday. Needing to shoot even par for the last nine holes, your pre-tournament favorite checked out with a five-over-par 41, which included a five-alarm chili dip and assorted other un-Corey shots.

“I’m gonna go back and work on my game,” Pavin said. “It was just bad golf.”

Bad golf is one thing. Bad golf at one of his favorite courses is another. If Hogan had his alley, Pavin has his place--and it’s at Riviera Country Club. Pavin won the Nissan (L.A.) Open here less than six months ago and won it the year before too. No reason to think he wouldn’t at least be among the final groups Sunday.

Instead, Pavin recorded a third-place tie for the worst back nine of the day and his 71-76 didn’t put him anywhere near the lowest cut in PGA Championship history. This year’s U.S. Open winner didn’t even bother looking at the scoreboard down the stretch. Why bother?

“I just can’t play well every week,” he said. “I try. I’m out there working hard, but it just wasn’t there today.”

Pavin’s round went down the tubes about the same time he heard music come from the general direction of the portable toilets near the 10th fairway. Pavin, nothing more than a short iron from the green, chunked the approach shot, leaving the ball some 30 feet short of the pin.

That done, he stared toward the noise, dropped his head and then tossed his club at his bag. Three putts later, he had his bogey.

“There was music over there,” he said, “but it didn’t bother me. I just hit it fat.”

Pavin parred the next three holes, but Bruin honks knew the UCLA alumnus was in trouble. On No. 14, supposedly one of the more friendly par threes at Riviera, he pulled his iron shot left and into a greenside bunker. Pavin dropped the club in disgust and made his way forward.

“C’mon, Corey, make that cut!” someone wearing a UCLA cap yelled. Pavin stared straight ahead.

Bogey.

The end came on No. 15, the killer 443-yard par four. Pavin pushed his drive into a trap. With a Bob Rosburg lie--”Brent, he has absolutely no shot”--Pavin pulled out an eight-iron to play it safe. Instead, he skimmed the ball over the beach and into the lip of the trap. A wedge later, he was on the fairway, but it didn’t matter.

Double bogey.

“When I failed to get it out, that’s probably when I fell pretty much out of reach,” Pavin said. “That was pretty much the difference.”

Make par there and Pavin still had an outside chance to make the cut. He could birdie the last three holes--uh, huh--and hope to squeeze in to the final two days’ of play.

Now four over with only three holes left, Pavin quit with the fat part of the greens and aimed for pins. He didn’t have a choice. He also didn’t have a prayer.

“I had to take some chances,” he said. “I had to make the cut. I don’t second-guess the way I went around thinking my back nine.”

This was Pavin’s worst round at Riviera since he shot a 77 during the second day of the 1987 L.A. Open. He tried to be gracious about the score, but it wasn’t easy.

When Steve Ball, a PGA Board member, announced his arrival on the 18th green, Pavin forced a grin to the crowd and tipped his hat. After putting out, he walked up the steps toward the clubhouse, ignoring all autograph requests.

“Corey, how about an autograph for your No. 1 fan?” someone asked.

Pavin kept walking.

“I guess he’s not in a good mood.”

Pavin signed his scorecard and then was asked to report to an interview area near the practice putting green.

“I respectfully decline,” he told a PGA official. “It’s not that I don’t want to . . . well, I really don’t. I’ve got supper plans.”

Pavin eventually cooled off. He signed autographs. He politely answered all questions in the locker room. He tried to explain the unexplainable.

“I feel like any course they play the PGA on, I’ll play well,” he said. “It probably hurts a little bit more that it was at Riviera. But it’s a little different course than it was at the L.A. Open. My game was a little different than at the L.A. Open. That’s the biggest thing.”