Perez shoots a 61, but this doesn’t look like a blowout

Defending champion D.J. Trahan, just to name one birdie mass-producer, shot a round enviable to almost anyone Wednesday, hoarding eight birdies, going out in 31, finishing in 65.

Yeah, and he’s in a 15-way tie for 13th place.

Even given its image as a birdie bounty, the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic served up a birdie avalanche in the first round, when its four courses at La Quinta and Bermuda Dunes saw six players shoot nine-under-par 63s but wind up sharing fourth place and two shoot 10-under-par 62s but wind up sharing second.

To find somebody in first place, you had to burrow all the way to 11-under 61, where sat Pat Perez, and to find wind greater than 6 mph in the forecast, you had to look all the way to Sunday, when apparently it might kick up to 9 mph.

What’s it all mean? It means Joe Durant’s 36-under-par 324 in 2001, the PGA Tour’s 90-hole record, might as well start shuddering, as perhaps should Ernie Els 72-hole record of 31 under par. The forecast calls for rain and mosquitoes today, utter calm on the other days and a whole 18-wheeler-load of birdies for the duration.

“The weather, there was no breath of air, it was just no wind anywhere,” said Bubba Watson, who shot 62 on the Palmer Course at PGA West.

And to think he thought himself laggard sitting only three-under through the front nine because Perez had played it in eight-under 28, whereupon, Perez said, “I was thinking 58 for sure.”

Birdie fever wouldn’t even relent to one of the Bob Hope’s famous logjams, seeing as how the 40-minute wait at the turn on Palmer bothered Mike Weir so much that he went and ate lunch -- “a sandwich and a salad” -- and returned to make four birdies and an eagle on the back nine, a matter pleasing to British Columbian/Albertan snowbirds bearing witness.

A 61, two 62s, six 63s, three 64s and 15 65s helped whittle the various course scoring averages to 68.59 for SilverRock, 68.34 for Bermuda Dunes, 67.47 for the Palmer Course and 66.72 for the debutant Nicklaus Course, and a consensus did seem to congeal on the subject of the rather breezy Classic Club in Palm Desert that served as host course the last three years.

It’s safe to call its fresh absence from the tournament unlamented.

“I shot 60” in 2006, said Perez, and indeed he did, the first day on Palmer, “and I had the first tee time the next morning” -- at Classic Club -- “and it was blowing a hundred. I mean, it was literally, it was blowing a hundred down there.

“I said, ‘You know, how the hell can you put a golf course where a thousand windmills over here are? I hit the first ball in the water” -- one of three that day -- “and I literally almost got in the car and drove home.”

He shot 73, then after a 70 and 75 elsewhere, returned on Sunday for a final-round 78 that almost reached 80 and told his caddie, “Should I hit it in the water, do you think, and make the six and shoot 80, so I have something that no one has ever done, hit 60, 70 and 80 right on the button?”

Here and now this week, though, those frights are so over-the-mountain, and you have such tranquillity that Perez called Palmer’s back nine “one of my favorite nine holes to play” after his 61 with a bogey (No. 5, his 14th hole), and you have Watson saying, “I can easily see that 10 under is not winning, but I’m just glad I got 10 under. So I’m not too far back.”

You have recent tour qualifying school graduates David Berganio Jr., and Jason Dufner churning out 63s to join Vaughn Taylor, Briny Baird, Richard S. Johnson and Ben Crane, and you have Crane remembering how his high school coach would say, “ ‘OK, target score for you today is . . . ,’” and how Crane would think, “Why don’t we set a target score of 45, you know, if you’re going to set a target score?”

Forty-five here would seem out of reach, somewhat.

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chuck.culpepper@yahoo.com