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Leaders Have Low Profile

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Times Staff Writer

A golfer must do two things to have a chance at winning the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic: shoot a low opening score, then continue shooting low scores.

Skip Kendall and Mark Hensby took care of the first step Wednesday, carding nine-under-par 63s in a first round that started in wind and rain but quickly settled into pristine desert conditions.

Kendall and Hensby have a one-shot lead over Kenny Perry and are two ahead of Justin Leonard, Jerry Kelly and Jay Haas. A group of seven, including Lee Janzen and Kirk Triplett, shot 66.

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Phil Mickelson, making his 2004 debut, shot 68 and is in a 20-way tie for 29th. Defending champion Mike Weir shot 70 and is tied with 25 others for 61st place.

The trick at the Hope, however, is to keep it going. The winning score in the 90-hole tournament has been 25 under or better in each of the last seven years.

“If you don’t get off to a good start, you are behind in this tournament in a hurry,” said Perry, the 1995 Bob Hope champion.

Kendall played his first round at the Palmer Course at PGA West in La Quinta. Hensby, Perry and Kelly played at Indian Wells Country Club. Leonard and Haas played Bermuda Dunes Country Club.

Wednesday, the stroke average at Indian Wells was lowest at 68.66. Bermuda Dunes was next at 69.16, followed by the Palmer at 69.56 and La Quinta Country Club at 71.41.

There were 94 players who shot under par, 60 who shot in the 60s and only 18 who shot over par.

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“I know you’ve got to shoot real low, which puts more pressure on you because you’ve got to make more putts,” said Hensby, an Australian returning to the tour after spending the last two years on the Nationwide Tour.

Kendall, playing in the first group of the day, had three birdies and an eagle in his first six holes, then added another birdie at No. 8 to make the turn in six-under 30. He made putts of 25, 25 and 30 feet on Nos. 4-6, then added three back-nine birdies that enabled him to match his career-low round.

But Kendall isn’t looking for a low first round. This is his 294th start. He has made the cut in 199 of them, has 21 top-10 finishes and been runner-up three times, but victory has eluded him.

“I think that always creeps into your head,” Kendall said. “But I’m not going to get hung up on it. I think it’s going to happen in due time.”

This is the fifth time in his career that Kendall has held or shared a first-round lead. It is also the eighth straight year that the first-round leaders have shot 63 at the Bob Hope. None of the previous seven went on to win.

Kendall has lost twice in playoffs, in 1998 to Scott Simpson at Torrey Pines and in 2000 to Steve Lowery in the Southern Farm Bureau Classic. He said what has prevented him from winning so far is the inability to consistently get in contention.

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“I just need to get there more often,” he said. “One of these times it’s going to go my way and I’m going to pull one off.”

Last year, he nearly pulled off his finger. Sliced it off is more accurate. While cutting a bagel, he sliced through the top of his finger and needed 16 stitches to repair it. He returned to action three weeks later with a reverse overlap grip and had his best finish of the season -- a fourth place at the Buick Open.

He jokes now that several friends have sent bagel slicers, but at the time it was no joking matter.

“It got almost all the way to the bone,” Kendall said. “I kind of picked it up, and they sewed it back on.”

Hensby was the third alternate for the tournament and is lucky to be playing this week. He found out Tuesday he was in because Hidemichi Tanaka withdrew. The seventh-place finisher on the 2003 Nationwide Tour money list, Hensby is low on the priority list for getting into tournaments.

“It’s tough for guys coming out here to start off with,” he said. “You don’t know where you are going to play.”

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