GOLF : Moorpark’s Ravaioli Honing Her Game for Shot at LPGA Tour

It is doubtful that there will be many jokes about bad women golfers circulating at Sunset Hills Country Club in Thousand Oaks this week. For the next few days, 54 of the best women golfers in the West will challenge the course in a 54-hole Players West Tour event.

The tour, which began three years ago as a replacement for the defunct Women’s Pro Golf Tour, will offer 27 tournaments this year from Washington state to Arizona. Purses are modest, averaging $12,000, with about $1,800 going to the winner.

But the Players West Tour is not about getting rich. It’s about getting a chance to play competitive golf. And it’s about dreams.

Angie Ravaioli of Moorpark has one of those dreams. Hers is to one day play on the major circuit, the LPGA Tour. She will make her bid in August when she plays in the LPGA Qualifying School sectional in Venice, Fla.

Ravaioli, 24, who starred at Southern Methodist, fully expects to be among those getting the prized LPGA card.

“I will go to the qualifying school with the idea of it being a tournament, not a qualifying sectional,” she said moments before teeing off Tuesday in the first of three rounds at Sunset Hills. “I’ll go with the idea of winning the tournament.”

The difference, Ravaioli said, between the LPGA Tour and the Players West Tour is largely mental. The talent, she figures, is roughly the same.

“It’s about learning how to win, about how to block out everything else like the travel and all the other distractions,” she said.

Toward that end, Ravaioli has been consulting a psychologist, Sunset Hills member Dr. David Howard of Thousand Oaks, working with him on improving her mental outlook toward the game and learning to focus on only golf.

“It has worked for me,” she said. “I’m so much better now at being able to keep everything out of my mind and just playing golf.”

The numbers support Ravaioli. Last year on the Players West Tour she finished 18th, winning $4,461. This year, after just 10 events, she ranks fifth with earnings of $5,012.

That figure might leap this week at Sunset Hills, where she has a bit of an advantage over the rest of the field. Ravaioli is an assistant pro at the course. She knows each twist and turn and pine tree on a personal basis. And, instead of staying in a hotel, she has the comforts of home to return to each night.

And in the morning, Ravaioli can concentrate on just one thing. She is, as her license plate indicates, FXN2GLF.

Closely linked: Corey Pavin, who grew up in Camarillo, sits atop the PGA Tour earnings list with a whopping $721,898. Steve Pate, who grew up in Ventura, is third with $518,795. Only the presence of Lanny Wadkins in the No. 2 position on the money list is keeping them apart. Even the PGA Tour media guide can’t separate Pavin and Pate. Their pictures and biographies are on successive pages.

The former teammates at UCLA have taken different roads to success.

In his rookie year on the tour in 1984, Pavin won the Houston Open and finished a surprising 18th on the earnings list. A year later he won the prestigious Colonial Invitational in Fort Worth, Tex., and vaulted into the No. 6 position on the list. The next two years also brought success, with 15th- and 19th-place finishes on the money list and back-to-back victories in the Hawaiian Open. Pavin also won the Greater Milwaukee Open and Bob Hope Classic during that span.

But in 1988, Pavin fell hard. He won the Texas Open but didn’t do very well anywhere else. He finished 50th on the earnings list, his worst year on the tour. Until 1989. That year he crashed to 82nd place on the list, calling it the worst of his golfing life.

Last year brought the beginning of his resurgence. He finished the year with some brilliant play and climbed to 26th on the money list.

And this year he is on a pace to exceed $1 million in earnings for a season.

Pate, who lives in Simi Valley and plays out of Wood Ranch Country Club, took a more common route to the top, slumped, then recovered just as Pavin has.

As a rookie in 1985, Pate finished 89th on the earnings list. The next year he rose to 51st and in 1987 he won his first PGA Tour event, the Southwest Classic, and jumped to 26th on the money list.

In 1988, Pate became one of the best players on the tour, winning the MONY Tournament of Champions at La Costa in Carlsbad and the San Diego Open. He finished 12th on the money list with $582,473.

In 1989, however, he was just 35th on the list and in 1990 he again fell, this time to 39th place. But his 1991 earnings, halfway through the season, are just $82,000 below his personal high--$582,473 in 1988.

Upcoming events:

* The fifth Notre Dame High alumni golf tournament will be held Monday at Braemar Country Club in Tarzana. Shotgun start, four-player scramble.

Information: 818-501-2300.

* The third Agoura/Las Virgenes Chamber of Commerce tournament will be held Friday at Camarillo Springs Golf Course.

Information: 818-889-3150.