Alcott Is the Leader of an Easter Parade

RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. —  There’s an art to winning from ahead, to smuggling a seven-shot lead safely into the clubhouse in the final round of a golf tournament.

Arnold Palmer never mastered it. Arnold squandered a seven-shot lead in nine holes in a U.S. Open.

Raymond Floyd was a master at it. So was Lee Trevino. Give Lee a six-shot lead with 18 to play and you couldn’t catch him with a bus.

There are several ways to do it: You can go for the fat part of the green on approach. You can lag the putts. You can over-club if there’s water in the front and under-club if there’s water in the back. You can lay up on par-fives even though you might reach them in two if reaching them in two puts you in danger of sliding off the green into a six.

In other words, you have all the chips and the cards. The other guy’s got to call.

There’s another way to play it: You can go about it as if you’re the one who’s seven shots behind. You can play the same bold game you always played. You can go for the par-fives over water with a wood, shoot for the pins, try to cut the doglegs--Arnold Palmer it, in other words. You can try to break the course record, not just win the event. Get greedy. Neither Jack Nicklaus nor Ben Hogan would ever do this. Neither would Nick Faldo. But you can.

You can add Amy Alcott to the roster of players who know what to do with a runaway lead. She had seven shots on the Nabisco Dinah Shore field after three rounds. She had eight shots after it was over.

Amy played Frank Sinatra golf. She did it her way.

It should have been the most comfortable of positions for Amy. If she shot nice, safe par, it would have taken a 64 to beat her--on a course where the best any of the other 122 players could do all week was a scrambling 68.

She could have gone out and played the most boring round of customer golf you would ever want to follow. She could have put the gallery to sleep, got the viewers to switch channels. Ray Floyd would know how to do it. Tom Kite practically invented it.

Trouble is, Amy Alcott doesn’t have a clue. Not her style. “I don’t know how to play that lay-up game,” she protested on the eve of the final round as she came into the press tent 11 under par over a field that had managed only four under for its best.

Amy’s game is making up shots on the field, not holding them: “I’ve been seven shots behind and won. I made up five in the Colgate Far East Open despite seeing four snakes in my line. I made up six shots at the Lady Keystone in Hershey in 1984.”

So Amy went out for Sunday’s final round as if this were one of those auto races where the field bunches back up after a caution lap. She remembered only once in her career when she had her field wallowing in her wake like this--the 1980 Women’s Open. “I started the final round with a nine-shot lead and I won it by 10. All I remember is Hollis Stacy coming up to me on the 18th and saying ‘For God’s sake, don’t nine-putt here now!’ ”

For Amy, however, even a seven-shot lead was an embarrassment of riches. “I only know one way to play the game,” she insisted. “I go for birdies. I aim for the pin. I take out the driver. I try to make great golf shots. I couldn’t leave a putt short if you tied me.”

Still, for a lot of players, a round with a seven-shot lead is a trip through a haunted house at midnight. The enemy is the weather--it was too nice, a gleaming 85 degrees, no wind. The course was no help--it was too easy. Someone was sure to roll a 63 around it, reasoned Amy. The gallery, while not hostile, was sure to root for a contest. They wanted a shootout, not a walk in the park. They wanted a chase scene in this drama. The network wanted competition, not a parade.

Amy Alcott is probably the best able of anyone on the tour to handle this kind of ambivalent pressure. A self-labeled space cadet, there is, first of all, that limelight. Eighteen holes of it. That’s where Amy wants to be. Amy looks at a camera the way a playboy looks at a chorus girl.

Amy Alcott was not about to choke down on a four-iron or lay up with a seven-wood or try some a punch shot under a tree when she could fly it over. “I don’t know how to play like that,” she protests. “The year I won here my caddie told me to hit it short of the water and try to bump it up there for a one-putt. ‘The worst you’ll get is in the playoff,’ he tells me. I told him ‘If I did that, I wouldn’t sleep tonight. I’m going to take this three-iron and jump all over it.’ I took the three-iron and hit the hell out of it. I won the way I wanted to.”

As it turned out, she could have won this year blindfolded. In a rocking chair. It wasn’t even a walk in the park. The toughest thing Amy Alcott had to do all week was dry off after jumping in the lake at 18.

Whatever turned Mission Hills into a series of mysteries surrounded by enigmas to the rest of the field was an open book to Amy. She didn’t need 14 clubs and a caddie. A two-iron and a putter would have sufficed. In fact, a rake and a hoe would.

She turned a tournament into a recital. A chorus into a solo. She started the final round seven shots ahead and finished eight shots ahead. She took so much suspense out of it, the tourney was finished in library silence. There have been noisier galleries at brain surgery.

This was the third time for Amy here. “Maybe,” she offered brightly, “they’ll call this ‘Alcott’s Alley’ the way they called Riviera ‘Hogan’s Alley.’ ”

Whatever they call it, it was all in love with Amy. Seldom has a player so dominated a championship course. Richard Steele would never have allowed it to continue beyond the third hole of the second round.

“I played what I would call steady, brilliant golf all week,” Amy admitted.

Amy is the Will Rogers of golf. She never made a shot she didn’t like. No matter what happens. “I hit a great chip there,” she will tell the press. Or, “I made a fabulous putt there.” Sometimes, trees get in the way of these fabulous shots. Other times, creeks do. Sand traps. Amy is not deterred. Accidents of nature do not discourage her.

She broke the tournament record. She crept within one victory of the Hall Of Fame. It was her 29th tour victory, her fifth “major.” She has won $2,612,625 on the golf course. She’s only 35.

She may turn all of golf into Alcott’s Alley before she’s through.

* RECORD VICTORY: Amy Alcott broke her tournament record with a 72-hole score of 15-under-par 273. C3.