LPGA Tournament at Buena Park : Patchy Greens Should Make the Going Rough

They will be playing in a city known for its amusement park, but when the Ladies Professional Golf Assn. returns to Orange County today, the players will find the course at Buena Park anything but amusing.

The field in this 72-hole event, called the Nippon Travel--MBS tournament, will be strong, but even the most skilled players on the tour will be tested at Los Coyotes Country Club, a shapely patch of nature three miles from Knotts Berry Farm.

The course, at 6,350 yards, is longer than the usual LPGA layout. Of the 33 courses on the tour’s schedule, only 11 play longer than 6,300. But distance alone is not what will make Los Coyotes challenging.

Earlier in the summer a fungus got into the greens and ate away the grass roots, leaving bare patches scattered around the putting surfaces.

Even with the persistent efforts of the greenskeeper to rebuild and strengthen the weakened parts of the turf, some blotches remain, although the greens are now reasonably playable, according to the LPGA’s on-site official, Jim Haley.

“They are a lot better than they were five weeks ago, and they should improve each day,” Haley said.

The players are coming off consecutive weeks in which they putted on fast greens.

“Last week’s greens (in Seattle) were so fast and so smooth, it’s going to take a couple of days to get a feel for these,” Pat Bradley, one of the tournament favorites, said.

“There are some rough spots and the ball is not going to roll true all the time, I don’t feel. As putts start to die at the hole, they will start to jump.”

Scores were high the last time an LPGA event was played at Los Coyotes. In 1971, when Kathy Whitworth, Sandra Haynie and Sandra Palmer were the leading economic indicators of women’s golf, Whitworth won the Suzuki Internationale with a three-round score that was one over par. There were only three over-par victories in 21 tournaments that year.

Whitworth, who is entered this week, is admittedly not playing well.

“I’ll do well to make the (36-hole) cut,” she said.

Whitworth says the long hitters--Bradley, Nancy Lopez and Beth Daniel--will have an upper hand on this course, and she favors Lopez.

“Nancy is a very good slow-greens putter,” Whitworth said. “She hits long enough and is a good front-runner.”

That will be important this week. The finishing holes are not set up for come-from-behind heroics.

Lopez, this season’s third-leading money winner and last year’s player of the year, has won twice this year, the LPGA Championship and the Atlantic City tournament, and is seeking her fourth Vare Trophy, the award given for the lowest scoring average. With a 70.77 average, Lopez is in third place but is close enough to remain motivated.

Lopez also has handled the greens here well in practice, unlike in Seattle where she was on medication for a thyroid condition and finished tied for 39th.

“I made more putts on these greens today than I did last week,” she said Wednesday. “The ball is rolling real well.”

Said Bradley: “I think Nancy has really been a much stronger factor when the greens haven’t been to everyone else’s liking.”

The nines have been reversed for the tournament, which poses another difficulty for the players. The four finishing holes are all par fours, none are easy birdie holes, and two of them, No. 15 at 394 yards, and No. 17 at 384, loom as bogey holes.

This won’t be the players’ only shot at Los Coyotes. The LPGA, which last played in Orange County two years ago at Mesa Verde Country Club, has a three-year contract with the Buena Park club.