Making A Splash

Not that a comfortable pairing was insurance against Mission Hills' thick rough and smooth, fast greens. Only six players broke par for the tournament, while 21 finished at 12-over-par 300 or above—and those were players fortunate enough to have made the 36-hole cut. For a time, in fact, this year's Shore scarcely resembled tournament golf. High winds and cold, blowing rain during Thursday's opening round made it carnival golf, testing who could play best on one leg and who could putt while swaying like a slack-wire walker. Club selection? On some holes a player needed the instincts of a guess-your-weight pitchman to stay out of the water hazards.

Bowen and Muffin Spencer-Devlin, early starters, shot their co-leading 69s before the weather turned the course into a midway. Davies, who went out in the afternoon, had to settle for 75. Two former Dinah Shore winners were even less fortunate. Three-time champion Amy Alcott shot 81, and 1993 winner Helen Alfredsson, playing like a leaf in the wind, shot 86. "My 74 was good," said Lopez, happy to be in contention after going three over on the first six holes.

On the other hand, there was the strange case of Penny Hammel, who shot Thursday's other 69 at the height of the tempest. When the wind slackened on Friday morning Hammel went around in a less-steady 76. And when the desert turned warm and placid on the weekend, she could barely stand upright, hitting balls fat and thin on the way to a 77-78 finish.

For most of the field, though, Saturday's sounds of birds chirping signaled the start of the tournament. At first it appeared that Davies, who had shot 69 on Friday, would catch Green before lunch. But the Englishwoman "duffed" (her word) a couple of iron shots on the back side while Green played textbook golf behind her. Lopez, meanwhile, birdied the 13th, 15th and 16th holes, evoking shrieks of ecstasy from her gallery. "You can tell a Nancy roar from someone else's roar," Davies would say afterward. The excitement reached its peak on the 16th green, where Lopez rolled in a four-footer to go four under, a stroke behind Green.

"I could tell Nancy was really into it," said Redman, one of the Three Moms grouping of Lopez, Redman, and Terry-Jo Myers. "The nice thing about Nancy is that she never lets her own excitement turn negative against her playing partners. It's fun to play with her when she's center stage."

Lopez bogeyed the 17th and finished Saturday's round two behind Green and one ahead of Davies, but she admitted that just being in contention gave her the old "sensation of the hair rising on the back of my neck."

As a part-time golfer and full-time mother of three, the three-time LPGA champion didn't feel that electricity often last year. She finished 25th on the money list and failed to win a tournament for the first time since 1986. But now she's practicing more—out of guilt and at the prodding of her husband, former New York Met Ray Knight. The old guy can't sleep because he has kidney stones, Lopez cheerfully reported on Saturday, so he stays up to all hours analyzing videotapes of her swing. "He's got me trying to pop my putts more, like I used to," Lopez said, referring to the short, accelerating action she used all week. "The pendulum really isn't my stroke."

If technique didn't fully explain the Lopez resurgence, one could always point to inspiration—the presence in the gallery of her father and first golf teacher, 80-year-old Domingo Lopez, who is recovering after months of heart trouble. "Domingo," a smiling Lopez reminded reporters after the third round, "is Spanish for 'Sunday.' "

And a sweet domingo it appeared to be for Lopez, as she birdied the first two holes in the morning and swept into the lead at five under. Davies, by way of contrast, succeeded at bogeying the par-5 second hole even though she outdrove her companions by 40 yards and was never in real trouble on the hole. That left it to Lopez and Green to carry on the battle—unless you counted Bowen, plugging along at two under. And few did.

Bowen still trailed by three after Lopez birdied the 12th, but then Bowen birdied the 15th, about the time Lopez started running her putts a sofa's length past every hole. Somehow, Lopez bogeyed the 14th, 15th, 16th and 18th holes, handing the tournament back to Green...or, rather, to Davies...actually, to whoever wanted it.