LPGA Tournament at Buena Park : Turner Catches Walters to Share First-Round Lead With 67

Lisa Walters, who has missed more cuts than she has made this season, had it all going her way Thursday, taking the early lead with a five-under-par 67 in the LPGA’s $300,000 MBS golf tournament at Buena Park.

That was the good news. The not-so-good news was that the player who caught up with her later in the afternoon with birdies on the final two holes is Sherri Turner. Turner and Walters share a two-stroke lead over five players at Los Coyotes Country Club.

Pat Bradley, Amy Alcott, Jody Rosenthal, Patty Rizzo--who missed a one-foot putt on No. 18--and Jill Briles, a third-year pro who earned $27,157 last year, all shot 69s.

Turner, the leading-money winner during 1988, missed the cut last week in Seattle and showed up here ready to do some work.

“She is working hard this week,” said Turner’s caddy, Jean Darden, Thursday at the practice range, where Turner was still hitting in the 90-degree heat after her round had been completed. “She came in here Monday and started beating balls. She practiced and practiced.”

Turner is determined enough to play well this week that she also bowed out of the pro-am Wednesday so that she could practice.

Turner has won once this year, in the third week of the season in Hawaii. She is eighth on the earnings list with $187,742 but has fallen off the level of consistency she displayed in 1988, when she had 17 top-10 finishes. She has had seven this season, and this is her farewell tour stop. She was close to going home after missing the cut in Seattle, having made plane reservations, but changed her mind at the last minute.

“This is the last (official) tournament she is playing this year, and she said, ‘Let’s have some fun, ‘ “ Darden said.

Turner had an eagle on the 12th hole, a 455-yard par-five, to go with five birdies against two bogeys.

“I have been so frustrated (this season),” Turner said. “I’ve been putting a lot of pressure on myself to play well and I just haven’t. But (today), I felt things were going real well.”

Walters, in her fifth year on the tour, grew up in British Columbia but attended Florida State, where she was an All-American in 1981.

Walters’ best career finish was a tie for third in 1987, and she has never led a tournament.

In 22 outings this season, she has missed the cut 13 times, finished in the money nine times, and withdrew once--when the state of her game was in such disrepair that she walked off the course at Boston.

Last week in Seattle, however, she played her best golf of the year and finished tied for 15th.

“I started putting really well last week,” Walters said.

Having landed at the top of the leader board for the first time in her LPGA career, Walters discovered that she is very comfortable there.

“Some players say they are more comfortable a few shots off the lead, that it’s easier to strike from behind and things like that,” she said. “I feel very good where I am. I wouldn’t trade with anybody.”

Walters was hard-pressed to oblige the substantial concern about poor greens at the Los Coyote Country Club course. She sank putts of 30, 15, and 10 feet along with a couple of four-footers and a two-footer for birdies in her morning round. She made only one bogey--at the par-three seventh hole, when she hit an eight-iron 15 feet over the green on the 149-yard hole. She left herself a slippery downhill chip that ran by the cup by seven feet and made the putt coming back.

“The greens weren’t a problem at all,” Walters said. “They were faster then they had been during my practice round Tuesday.

“I think a good putter isn’t bothered by the type of greens. Good putters can putt on anything.”

The greens became more beat up and bumpier as the afternoon rounds were played.

Players had been concerned coming into the tournament that the greens, which had been damaged by a fungus earlier in the summer, would be difficult to handle.

“All of us as a whole have putted them (the greens) well considering the stress conditions mother nature has put them under,” said Pat Bradley, who shot a 69 and was in the five-player cluster in second place.