6TH GREEN SEEN AS SCARY SCENE.

Byline: KAREN CROUSE

If the No. 6 green at Valencia Country Club were any scarier, Stephen King's name would be on it. It is slippery when dry, with more mounds than a moguls run. It wouldn't surprise us if there are bodies buried beneath the dirt heaps.

The par-4, 427-yard hole has claimed its share of victims in the first three rounds of the Nissan Open. Golfers have posted 152 scores of bogeys or worse on the hole while manufacturing only 27 birdies, making it easily the toughest-rated hole on the course.

It might not be the finishing hole, but if you aren't careful, it can finish you off in a heartbeat. Just ask defending champion Nick Faldo, who three-putted from 30 feet Saturday for a bogey on his way to a 2-over-par 73 that left him 12 shots behind third-round leader Tommy Armour III.

``It's a difficult green to find even four good pin placements,'' said Skip Kendall, who could afford to be diplomatic after parring the hole on his way to a sweet 64 that elevated him to third, two shots behind Armour.

It's no coincidence that Armour, Kendall and the 11 other golfers bunched within five strokes of one another at the top of the leaderboard all were up to par on No. 6 on Saturday. If a four wasn't a scintillating score, why did Kendall call his par at the hole the key to a round that included seven birdies, three of them at Nos. 5, 7 and 8?

``That par felt pretty good,'' Kendall said. ``That kept my round going right there.''

Mike Springer got the horror stories going when he became the first golfer to take aim at the hole's latest diabolical pin placement, this one below a mound in the lower right quadrant of the green, which is flanked by a lake on the right.

Springer's offering went directly into the water (five groups later, Chris DiMarco's ball would wind up there, too, sacrificed by an angry DiMarco after he three-putted from the left-front side of the green for a bogey).

In the second group through, Jay Haas nearly landed the first eagle, grooving an 8-iron from the fairway that hit the flag and screeched to a stop three feet from the pin.

``The crowd kind of oohed and aahed, but I couldn't tell exactly where it had landed until I got up there,'' said Haas, who let out a visible sigh of relief when he walked up to the green and saw what little work he had left.

He gladly settled for the birdie, his second on the hole in three days and one of eight it yielded on the day under basically benign conditions. The gusty winds of the first two days that would have made it hard for golfers to raise a white flag even if they had been inclined to do so were replaced on Saturday by a balmy calm.

That effectively shortened the hole and made club selection easier. But the shots themselves were no less difficult. For that, the golfers could thank a pin placement that Tiger Woods called ``kind of borderline,'' as in most-definitely brutal.

Haas and the other birdie-makers pulled off a heist, in the opinion of Woods, who was content to two-putt the hole on his way to a six-under-65 that thrust him into a tie for third going into today's final round.

``(On Saturday) if you got a three on No. 6 you were stealing one,'' said Woods, whose approach shot on the hole landed 15 feet above the pin, spun and slinked to a stop some 15 feet below the flag. His first putt slid by the cup, setting off a stampede from many in Tiger's Troop who blithely assumed the putt left was a gimme.

Leave it to Woods to prove them right. Tom Kite earlier had made a birdie putt from roughly the same line as Woods' initial stroke, though from farther out. He hit from the front fringe, a distance of some 30 feet.

The safe landing spot, inasmuch as there was one, was to the left of the flag, comfortably away from the two bunkers that guard the left side of the green. That's where Kevin Sutherland and Fred Couples holed devilishly delicate downhill putts of 30 and 20 feet, respectively, one right after the other.

Later in the day, Phil Mickelson found a perfectly pristine landing spot, pin high and some eight feet to the left.

As he stalked what seemed - for him, anyway - an exceedingly makeable birdie, Mickelson's caddy handed him a wedge. It was all downhill from there. He missed the first putt, after which his caddy handed him another club, not his putter.

Two strokes later, Mickelson was staggering to the seventh tee with his third bogey of his back nine (he started at No. 10). After shooting a 5-over-par 40 on the front to finish with a 74, Mickelson explained, somewhat lamely, that the shaft of his putter had come loose - he wasn't sure when or where - and that he ``wasn't quite sure it would be legal to putt with it.''

In any event, the perils of the sixth hole were placed in their proper perspective early in the day when the threesome of Jonathan Kaye, Michael Bradley and Frank Lickliter was eyeballing their approach shots. On Interstate 5 on the other side of the fence, there was a screech, followed by the unmistakable sound of one car hitting another. Judging by how cars quickly ground to a halt, there was no playing through.

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PHOTO (Color) The sixth fairway wasn't so bad for Bob Estes and others, but the green was easily the most difficult at Valencia CC.

Tina Gerson/Daily News