Tom Pernice Jr. plays at fever-pitch to shoot 64 and grab a three-shot lead in Toshiba Classic

Tom Pernice Jr. caught a bug last week in Tucson, thought he had shaken it, then things got worse when he arrived in Southern California for the Toshiba Classic at Newport Beach Country Club.

The fever that he thought had broken returned and he said by early this week it had rocketed to 104.8 degrees.

Maybe that’s the answer to his problems at this event on the PGA Tour Champions.

Pernice, a 1982 graduate of UCLA, shot a seven-under-par 64 Friday in the opening round — his best score in six previous tries in this event — to open a three-stroke lead over a phalanx of seven players tied for second.

Pernice, 58, hasn’t had a lot of success in Newport Beach. He has won five Champions events in his career, but hasn’t had a top-10 finish in the Toshiba since 2011, when his best finish was a tie for eighth.

“I’ve been taking it easy this week,” Pernice said. “I’m on the way to recovery, but just trying to rest up.”

Seems like a good plan so far.

Pernice birdied all three par fives and played without a bogey on a windy day when the greens were firm and fast.

Joey Sindelar, Scott Verplank, Scott McCarron, David Frost, Tommy Tolles, Scott Parel and Fran Quinn, who got into the field as an alternate after Doug Garwood withdrew because of flu, are tied at 67.

Six more golfers — Steve Jones, Glen Day, Tom Byrum, Tom Lehman, Vijay Singh and Ken Tanigawa — are another stroke back at 68.

Sindelar and Parel, each looking for his first Champions victory, have been stories of perseverance in their pro golf careers, plodding along very different uphill paths.

Sindelar, 59, was a seven-time winner on the PGA Tour and enjoyed some early success on the 50-and-over circuit the first few years, though without a win. He’s had some setbacks along the way.

In 2009, during the third round of the Schwab Cup Championship, he suffered a pulmonary embolism, and was rushed to the hospital. Had he tried to play through the shortness of breath and dizziness he was feeling on the course, he might have died.

In 2012, he developed a bad back, had surgery that fall, tried to play again in 2013 and the pain returned. After being told by two specialists that his golf career was probably over, he eventually decided he had to rebuild his swing.

“I had a couple of boys in college at the time,” he said.

But he wasn’t getting any younger.

“All of a sudden you’re in your high 50s and the young guys are 50 and they’re better,” he said. “I’m actually still becoming strong even now, four full years later, learning how to be stronger. … But I’m very happy to be playing again.”

Parel, 52, has had an unlikely journey to the tour. He didn’t play golf at the University of Georgia and was 31 before he turned pro in 1996. He held on to his job as a computer programmer for seven years after that, though, as a backup plan.

But he kept at it on the minor league tour, now the Web.com Tour. He made 222 starts beginning in 1998, missing the cut in 118 of those. It wasn’t until 2013, at age 48, that he got his first victory.

Then in 2016 he played in eight Monday qualifying tournaments to get into PGA Tour Champions events, including a grueling six in a row. He made $336,392 in Champions events that year, but still needed to go to Q School to qualify for exempt status in 2017. He tied for medalist honors to make the tour full time and pocketed $876,841 a year ago.

Life is better now.

“It’s terrific,” he said. “I’ll tell you, it’s great. I couldn’t ask for much more, really.”

Other notable first-round scores: Mark O’Meara and Jose Maria Olazabal 69; Miguel Angel Jimenez, Bernhard Langer, Jerry Kelly and Jeff Maggert 70; John Daly 71, and Tom Watson 73.

The tournament, sponsored by Toshiba since its inception in 1995, will change its name to the Hoag Classic in 2019 as Hoag Hospital becomes title sponsor.

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