By David Westin
Staff Writer
Augusta Chronicle

If you see a Masters participant walking with his head down during a round, don't assume he just hit a bad shot or doesn't want to make eye contact with the gallery.

He may be trying to avoid the ever-present scoreboards that dot the Augusta National Golf Club.

Count Billy Mayfair and Ben Crenshaw among that number. Others, like Tom Lehman, want to know the latest news in the tournament.

``I said last year I think I did better because I didn't look at the scoreboards,'' said Crenshaw, the 1995 Masters champion. ``I'd always watched them and liked to know where I stood but I made my mind up to just play the course last year. It seemed to work quite well. You can't avoid them a lot of times. You have to make a conscious effort not to look.''

``You know where they are.'' Mayfair said. ``But you keep you head down low. I try to play my own game and not worry about anybody else. It's so easy to get intimidated out here.''

Larry Mize knows the feeling, or he did back in 1987. Mize went on to win the Masters that year, but he had to outduel Greg Norman and Seve Ballesteros in sudden death to do it.

``I remember walking off the 10th tee that year in the final round,'' Mize said. ``I saw my name up on the scoreboard and said `quit looking at it.' I didn't want to see it because it got me nervous.''

When Mize does look at an Augusta National scoreboard, he thinks back to his early teen-age years. An Augusta native, Mize worked the scoreboard on No. 3 in 1972 and 1973.

When Mayfair won the 1995 Western Open, he never looked at a scoreboard. What he would have seen was the crumbling of all the contenders around him.

``There are these great players you've idolized all your life and all of a sudden they're coming after you,'' Mayfair sad. ``You might play a little differently if you looked at the scoreboard. If you don't know they're there, you don't play any differently and you might beat them.''

Not watching scoreboards works for Mayfair, who was the second-leading money winner on the PGA Tour last year. It most definitely didn't for Sweden's Jesper Parnevik. By failing to check his position on the scoreboard going to the final hole of the 1994 British Open, it cost him a chance at victory. Parnevik thought he needed a par on the final hole for victory and played the hole conservatively. In fact, he needed a par to tie for the lead. He made bogey and lost by a shot to Nick Price.

Lehman is an avid scoreboard watcher but admits ``it can be a distraction if you get to watching them too much. You can get more concerned about what everyone else is doing than what you're doing. I like to play and every once in awhile take a peek and see what's happening and go back to business. Hopefully, it won't influence the way I'm playing.''

Mize, nine years removed from his Masters victory, looks at the scoreboards more often these days.

``A lot of it depends on where I stand in the tournament,'' Mize said. ``If I'm playing really well and I'm up there in contention, I'll glance at them because I like to knew what's going on. But I don't like to bird dog them.''