Non-Sense Continues on Tour

PEBBLE BEACH — It’s the tournament with headlines billing the top three players in the world, so who are the first-round leaders at the AT&T; Pebble Beach National Pro-Am?

They would be Greg Kraft, a 34-year-old non-winner from Michigan, and Brett Quigley (yes, that Brett Quigley), a 28-year-old non-winner from Massachusetts.

Welcome to the PGA Tour--the Parity Getting Annoying Tour. If you throw out David Duval, and many of his peers would love to do that, the other two tournament winners so far have been Jeff Sluman, who broke a 10-year winless drought last year, and Rocco Mediate, who ended a six-year winless streak last weekend at Phoenix.

Kraft and Quigley aren’t exactly preparing their victory speeches just yet, but after their six-under-par 66s in Thursday’s first round at Pebble Beach, they’re 18 holes closer to it. The only bigger surprise on the first day was that it didn’t rain.

Meanwhile, Tiger Woods and Duval had matching 72s at Spyglass, where Mark O’Meara posted a 71.

One shot behind the leaders after a 67 at Poppy Hills is 44-year-old Peter Jacobsen, better known these days as the lead singer of Jake Trout and the Flounders. Jacobsen has won this event and five others in a 21-year-career.

Kraft, on the other hand, is still looking for his first official victory, although he did win the Deposit Guaranty in 1993 when it wasn’t an official event because it was played opposite the Masters. He has had a bad shoulder for a while, and if anyone was expecting him to play well this week, Kraft didn’t offer much of a clue coming in, basically because he missed the cut in his three other tournaments.

“I was kind of lost for a while,” Kraft said. “It was kind of weird.”

And so was the weather, where there was enough blue sky and sunshine to fool everyone into thinking it’s going to stay that way through the weekend. This would not be the way to bet, and neither would it be too wise to forecast a victory for Kraft or Quigley.

But stranger things have happened and are likely to continue to happen, according to Jacobsen.

“I don’t know if you’d call it parity,” he said. “But there’s a lot of good players in golf, young and old.

“It’s a funny game. You can’t own it. You can rent it for a while, but you can’t own it.”

Quigley would settle for the rent situation. He hasn’t played competitively in two months and has spent his time sitting on the beach in Jupiter, Fla.

He has been busy doing nothing ever since he missed the top 125 on the money list by one shot and lost his PGA Tour card, then missed getting his card at the tour qualifying school by one shot.

“I’m not one really to look back,” Quigley said.

If he wanted to look back on his opening round, Quigley would see birdies on three of his first four holes, six in all and not one bogey.

There is a six-way tie for fourth at 68 among Jay Haas, Harrison Frazar, Frank Lickliter, Kevin Sutherland, Kirk Triplett and Charles Raulerson. Taking advantage of the freaky outburst of good weather, 78 players finished the first round at par or better on the usual three courses of Pebble Beach, Spyglass and Poppy Hills. The players will be allowed to lift, clean and place their balls through the first three rounds at all three courses. The golf balls were clean, but the rounds were long, averaging more than six hours.

Jacobsen had one bogey, but he also eagled No. 18 at Poppy Hills, his ninth hole, when he cut a three-wood second shot around a tree and stopped the ball 12 feet from the hole, then made the putt. That was sort of inspiring and it even got him to thinking he could win again, as he did in 1995 when he won consecutive tournaments here and at Torrey Pines.

“The reality is I’ll be 45 in a month, and it just gets tougher and tougher,” he said. “I probably will never beat Tiger Woods or David Duval or Justin Leonard or Davis Love on the money list, but maybe ridiculously so, I still think I can beat them in a tournament.”

Maybe so, but he’s got to get past Kraft and Quigley first.

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Pebble Beach Leaders

Leaders through Thursday’s play (Complete scores, Page 13):

Greg Kraft: 34-32--66 -6

Brett Quigley: 35-31--66 -6

Peter Jacobsen: 35-32--67 -5

Six tied at: -4