`THIS IS FAR FROM OVER,' SIMPSON SAYS TO PRESS.

Byline: Linda Deutsch Associated Press 

O.J. Simpson declared ``this is far from over'' Tuesday as the focus in his civil case shifted to how the football great might fend off a crushing $33.5 million jury award.

In a brief telephone conversation with the Associated Press, Simpson declined to discuss his next move in court or in life, saying: ``I don't want to join in this circus atmosphere that's out there at this time.''

``It would be premature for me to say anything now,'' he said. ``Obviously, I have feelings. But this is far from over.''

Later Tuesday, he went to the Rancho Park Golf Course and played 18 holes.

Simpson has played golf nearly every day since a jury unanimously ruled him liable and ordered him to pay $8.5 million in the 1994 slashing deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. He even watched TV coverage of Monday's $25 million punitive judgment against him from a golf course bar.

``He's pretty good, not real good,'' longtime golfer Mark Borish said as he watched Simpson play the public Rancho Park links. ``If you play every day, you ought to get a little better at it.''

While Simpson played, his chief lawyer, Robert Baker, also kept his silence about how he will fight the combined $33.5 million award - which is more than twice as much as even Simpson's accusers say he could ever pay.

Within two weeks, Baker is expected to ask Superior Court Judge Hiroshi Fujisaki to set aside the verdict, order a new trial or reduce the award as excessive.

``The amounts are obviously very high and I would expect the courts to reduce those amounts to something more within the scope of other cases like this,'' Simpson lawyer Robert Blasier said on NBC's ``Today Show.''

Asked if Simpson would be able to pay the judgment, Blasier said: ``I've been basically living with him for the last year, off and on, and I can tell you that the plaintiff experts who say that he can generate an income stream of $2 million to $3 million a year . . . on autographs, is just ridiculous.''

President Clinton urged Americans to respect the Simpson verdict but said he is worried about the racial divisions it exposed.

``In terms of the way Americans see the world differently, generally, based on their race, that troubles me,'' Clinton said. ``I think the only answer to that is for us to spend more time listening to each other and try to put ourselves in each other's shoes.''

The jurors, meanwhile, went from talk show to talk show all day and said it was the Bruno Magli shoes, the blood drops, the glove, the hand cuts and Simpson's failure to explain them all away that were the deciding factors in the verdict. They all insisted race played no role in their decisions.

Citing the Simpson case, Assemblywoman Barbara Alby, R-Sacramento, is proposing a bill that would prevent a parent convicted of the other parent's death or found civilly liable for that death from getting child custody.

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2 Photos

Photo: (1) A worker begins to tear down a tent Tuesday that housed the CBS news crew at ``Camp O.J.'' in Santa Monica.

(2) Cables clutter the ground outside the courthouse in Santa Monica.

Terri Thuente/Daily News