Torrey Pines Leader Does Relatively Well

How do you figure this? Everybody shows up to see a Tiger, and a Baby Walrus steals the show.

Tiger Woods played his first round of competitive golf in a month and was something short of spectacular. Yet his opening 71 Thursday on the tougher South course at Torrey Pines was a steady start at the Buick Invitational, where Kevin Stadler shot an eight-under-par 64 on the North course and took a one-shot lead over Jesper Parnevik and Ted Purdy.

This Stadler act is an all-in-the-family thing. Kevin is Craig’s son, and because Craig is known as the Walrus, 24-year-old Kevin could be nothing other than Baby Walrus.

He is regularly reminded of that.

“Like every four feet, wherever I go,” Stadler said. “I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing, but it will never go away unless I do something about it.”

There is an unmistakable family resemblance, mostly in body style, which can best be described as resembling something that comes out of its cave in the spring. Let’s just say that Stadler is stout, like his father.

“It’s kind of scary, especially last week,” he said about playing with his father at Pebble Beach. “People are always telling me about how much alike we are, and I’m just sitting there looking at him, 10 feet in front of me, the way he’s standing and I kind of realize I’m standing that exact same way.

“I kind of shuffle around a little bit to try to get away from that.”

So the first-round leader is a chip off the old Walrus. Craig won this tournament in 1994. Kevin, an All-American at USC in 2002, is trying to win it as a sponsor’s exemption, something he’s not all that comfortable being.

“I definitely don’t feel like I should be here, because I haven’t earned my way out here yet,” he said.

If having a Baby Walrus lead the tournament was a surprise, though, so were the fortunes of Vijay Singh and Phil Mickelson.

Singh, taking 35 putts, shot a one-under 71 on the room service layout of the North course, which produced 26 of the top 27 scores. Hal Sutton was the exception, shooting a 67 on the South.

Mickelson, a three-time winner of this event, shot a two-over 74 on the South.

Singh thus made his job of extending his top-10 streak a little more difficult by failing to torch the North course. So, he must try to make up ground today on the tougher South, site of the 2008 U.S. Open.

It was a so-so return to action for Woods, who hit only six of 14 fairways, needed 32 putts and still managed to shoot under par.

“I felt like I just hung in there,” the defending champion said. “I didn’t play well, but I just hung in there and kept myself out of trouble.”

Woods filled out his agenda for today.

“Everyone is tearing apart the North, so I need to do that tomorrow.”

Parnevik, who hasn’t won since the 2001 Honda Classic, fell to 118th on the money list last year, his worst since he started playing the PGA Tour full time in 1997. He said he lost his confidence last year.

“What that does, it’s very, very hard to be competitive,” he said.

Purdy is resurfacing on the PGA Tour after five years. In 1999, his rookie year, he made eight cuts in 27 tournaments, and his best finish was a tie for 35th here.

Kevin Sutherland, Mathias Gronberg, Craig Barlow, Bob Tway and Tom Lehman are two shots behind Stadler after they shot 66s on the North course.

The North played almost four shots easier than the South: 69.7 for the North, 73.5 on the South.

Stadler, who had a birdie-eagle finish, will continue to make a case that he belongs today, but it helps that he made the cut last week at Pebble Beach, where he tied for 61st in his fourth PGA Tour event. He still has a long way to go to match his father’s career, which featured 13 tournament victories, including the 1982 Masters.

There is also one area in which Kevin does not come close to matching his dad. Kevin’s temper runs at a lower temperature than Craig’s, mainly because father wants it that way.

“He’s always hounded me to be more calm on the golf course,” Kevin said. “I was a nightmare when I was a junior. I’ve gotten a lot better.”