1995 / 77th PGA RIVIERA : Riviera Won't Forget Bradley : Golf: But with everyone tearing it up, his 63 good for only a one-shot lead over Gallagher and O'Meara.

By THOMAS BONK

Aug. 11, 1995 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

If it’s opening day of the PGA at Riviera Country Club, what’s the best way to celebrate the occasion?

Do you slap it silly? Do you park shuttle buses full of golf balls in holes on greens that Greg Norman called “land mines”?

Or do you act like John Daly, whose only comment after a round of 76 was to lug two large boxes of chocolate-chocolate chip muffins to his courtesy car?

The answers are yes and yes. But mostly it was a time to score big Thursday at Riviera, which at least for one day was a lot like the eucalyptus trees whose bark was worse than their bite.

This time, Riviera’s chief tormentor was not a Faldo or a Couples or a Norman or a Price, it was Michael Bradley, a 29-year-old from Valrico, Fla., whose 63 tied the lowest score ever shot in a major golf tournament.

The conqueror gulped, swallowed and considered his impact. He did not sound too confident.

“I might look calm on the outside, but on the inside, I’m churning, I can tell you,” Bradley said.

“If I go out and play bad [today], come Sunday no one’s going to remember my name,” he said. “No one is going to know if I don’t play well the next few days. Come Sunday, I’ll just be a memory.”

He knows what he’s talking about. Bradley, who has not made the cut in his three other experiences in majors, missed a 22-foot birdie putt on the 18th for a record 62 by a foot and a half.

As it is, Bradley had to settle for a one-shot lead over Mark O’Meara and Jim Gallagher, Jr., who had matching 64s and finished their rounds before Bradley began.

Peering out at the golf world through his purple-tinted shades, leading the PGA after one round looked pretty good to Bradley.

“I’d like three more of them,” said Bradley, whose brief biography lists his hobby as agronomy.

So it was that a nearly anonymous agronomist took the first-day lead over 149 other golfers, most of them enjoying a field day at Riviera.

There were a PGA-record tying 57 players under par--26 played the first round under par in the 1983 PGA at Riviera. The only other time so many shot sub-par first rounds in the PGA was in 1993 at Inverness.

After O’Meara and Gallagher, John Adams is two shots behind Bradley after a six-under 65. There is a group of six at five-under 66 that features Greg Norman, Lee Janzen, Ernie Els, Jeff Maggert, Chip Beck and Gil Morgan.

Nick Price opened with a 71 in defense of his title. Corey Pavin opened with the same score and considered himself fortunate.

“There’s a long way to go,” Pavin said. “It wasn’t the start I wanted, obviously.”

Maybe it was the ball he left in the bunker on No. 6 or a missed 18-inch putt on No. 9 that made Pavin say that.

Gallagher got ready for the PGA by taking two weeks off after the British Open. He also was a spectator Saturday at the Brickyard 400 in Indianapolis, which probably accounts for his fast start.

O’Meara’s tour of Riviera featured eight birdies and a single bogey. That was on the par-four 12th when his second shot found a greenside bunker and he couldn’t get up and down.

“Sometimes you can kind of get in a little zone out there,” O’Meara said.

At least he knows what time zone he should be in. The last time O’Meara was to play at Riviera was in February when he showed up to play the Nissan Open. When he checked in, O’Meara was told he had not committed to the event and wasn’t in the field.

So he went skiing and to make up for not playing at Riviera, entered the Honda Classic. Of course, O’Meara won.

Bradley’s last moment of victory was the 1990 Quebec Open on the Canadian tour.

The former Oklahoma State golfer turned pro in 1988 and played in Australia, Canada and the mini-tour in Florida before he graduated from PGA Tour qualifying school in 1992.

If no one knew quite what to expect from Bradley, they obviously had no knowledge of the 59 he once shot in the 1991 Willows Classic Pro-Am in Saskatchewan, Canada.

Even there, they probably didn’t have greens like Riviera’s.

“You can spin it pretty good and the ball isn’t going to come back at you,” he said. “I like greens like that.”

Who doesn’t? Norman said the greens are the same for everybody, so the best approach is just to deal with it. Norman said he came to this conclusion right after he stroked a putt on the 13th hole and the ball became airborne.

“As long as you don’t get frustrated, you’re going into the next hole with a better frame of mind and you’re going to make the next putt . . . even though you’re putting over the same land mine,” Norman said.

Meanwhile, Bradley is planning the rest of his PGA journey. He is sort of unsure right know what kind of territory he will be covering and that is perfectly understandable: His lowest previous round in a major was a 73, a mere 10 shots higher than Thursday’s score.

For everyone in pursuit, big name-players included, Bradley offered words of encouragement.

“This is the first day,” he said. “They still got three more days.”

Now that’s the Riviera spirit.

Scores

Through 18 holes

Michael Bradley: 30-33--63

Mark O’Meara: 31-33--64

Jim Gallagher Jr.: 31-33--64

John Adams: 29-36--65

Gil Morgan: 32-34--66

Greg Norman: 31-35--66

Chip Beck: 34-32--66