Sports Watch

By Bill Kwon

Friday, January 7, 2000

GOLF WATCH

Pros caught in
Kapalua whirlwind

KAPALUA, Maui - The PGA Tour's 1999 tournament winners, including Tiger Woods and Jesper Parnevik, used a four-letter word liberally during yesterday's opening round of the Mercedes Championships.

The four-letter word? Wind. What else did you think?

"It was tough out there. The wind was close to the British Open. I wouldn't say it was Carnoustie winds, but it was very close," said Parnevik, the first-round leader with a 4-under-par 69 at the Kapalua Plantation Course.

It will be survival time if the brisk tradewinds with gusts up to 35 mph continue through Sunday's final round, according to Brad Faxon.

"I actually hit a 9-iron from 65 yards on the ninth hole, then had, gosh, 190 something (yards) on 17 and hit a 9-iron," he said.

"It's interesting because today you hit some clubs some distances that you're not quite used to," Woods said.

On the downwind opening hole, he was 242 yards away after his drive and hit a soft 7 iron to get to the green. At the 10th, dead into the wind, he hit the same soft 7 iron from 136 yards away.

"That's kind of the way the day was. You had to play it by feel," Woods said.

With the tradewinds back at Kapalua, nobody's going to touch the 26-under-par 266 that David Duval shot to win last year.

A lot of the holes are affected by crosswinds as well, making it difficult for the golfers to line up their tee shots despite the wide-open fairways.

"The hardest thing to do is aim and trust the aim," added Duffy Waldorf. "You aim in places you can't believe you've got to aim."

"The golf course is the same except for the conditions. Now we know what it is like playing in the wind," said tournament chairman Gary Planos.

The scores reflected it.

Only eight of the 30 players could better par at the sprawling 7,263-yard Plantation Course in the first round.

Last year, under calm conditions, only four players out of 30 DIDN'T shoot under par on the first day as Duval went on to win by nine strokes - the biggest margin of victory on the tour in 1999.

"Club selection is why it's tough and the elevation changes. You've got all these things you've got to factor within 45 seconds," said Notah Begay. "It's like being on a game show."

HAWAII golf lost its finest Filipino amateur golfer when Greg Dikilato died Dec. 22 at the age of 74. Dikilato was the epitome of the golfing expression, "Drive for show, putt for dough." He wasn't long off the tee, but he was deadly around the greens.

Dikilato won the Maui Open and the Navy-Marine Open in 1965, and represented Hawaii in five USGA Public Links championships and two Senior Amateur championships.

He won the Fil-American state championship 14 times.

His greatest triumph, however, came in the 1974 Oahu Country Club Invitational, when it was a major, 72-hole event for local amateurs. He putted his way to victory over two of the state's longest hitters, Allan Yamamoto and Al Souza. He wound up beating Yamamoto in a two-hole playoff on the final day.

Dikilato's one regret was not winning the Manoa Cup. He tried 20 times, and once reached the semifinals in 1963, losing to Ken Miyaoka. Dikilato also was a quarterfinalist three times.