By Dennis Oda, Star-Bulletin
Tom Lehman won $1.7 million on the PGA Tour last year
and was the player of the year.

Nice year. Heck, great year.

For Tom Lehman, who's sponsored by Dockers, that nice-pants company, 1996 was a great year. He was the PGA Tour's player of the year and leading money winner with a record $1,780,159. And, oh, he also won a major, the British Open, and the PGA Grand Slam of Golf, which was worth an additional $400,000.

"Yeah, an especially good year," said Lehman, who is here for the United Airlines Hawaiian Open, which began today at the Waialae Country Club. And Lehman stamped himself as one of the golfers to beat in the 144-player field by shooting a 7-under-par par 65 in yesterday's pro-am.

"I feel like last year I started to play up to my expectations," Lehman said. "It was a good year. I'm not going to say it wasn't. But I don't think it was above my head."

What can he do for an encore this year?

Lehman laughed at the question.

"I think if I can keep on improving the weak parts of my game, I'm going to win more tournaments. Hopefully, more majors, but you never know," said Lehman.

"With improvements in my short game and putting, hopefully that'll come, I think I'll get better results even yet."

Lehman's off to a decent start in 1997, finishing second to Tiger Woods in the Mercedes Championship, tied for seventh and 20th in three PGA events. That's not counting a tie for third in Australia last week when he skipped the Buick Invitational in San Diego.

"I haven't played great. But I've played pretty steady," said Lehman, who said he plans on playing in about the same number of tournaments he did last year when he finished among the top 30 in 20 of the 22 tournaments he made the cut.

And he's looking forward to this week at Waialae.

"I like this tournament a lot. I like playing here, I like playing in the wind," he said. "I like the golf course. I feel like I'm due to win."

He tied for fourth last year, second in 1995 and fifth in 1992.

"Paul Azinger's probably due to win one more than anybody. He's had, what, three seconds? But I've also had some success here without winning."

Lehman might need to win this year. The $216,000 top prize could come in handy since he's here with his wife, Melissa, who's expecting, their three kids, his mother, his grandmother and his brother Jim and his wife. And they'll all be vacationing on Maui next week.

So, Tom, why Dockers?

"They've been great to me. Contractually, this is my third year with them but I've been wearing Dockers for a long time. I really don't know how I got started with them. They were looking for somebody in golf and somehow they decided to zero in on me," Lehman said. "It's been a win-win situation."

Lehman has certainly kept up his end of the deal.

Besides Lehman, PGA Champion Mark Brooks also shot a 65 under ideal conditions yesterday with very little wind at the 7,012-yard Waialae course ... Defending champion Jim Furyk, who won Tuesday's Johnny Bellinger Shoot-Out, captained the winning pro-am team yesterday with a 20-under-par 52. Team members were Tomoharu Taniguchi, Grandy Perry, Patrick Kobayashi and David Chun ... The team of professional Andy Bean and amateur partners Randy Block, Ray Jyo, Paul Osumi and Susan Yi placed first in the satellite pro-am at the Leilehua Course.