GAME OF LIFE : CATAPULTED TO SUCCESS BY `BULL DURHAM,' DIRECTOR SHELTON RETEAMS WITH STAR COSTNER TO CREATE `TIN CUP,' ANOTHER CHARACTER-DRIVEN DRAMA FROM THE UNDERBELLY OF SPORTS.

Byline: Amy Dawes Daily News Film Writer

It may be set in the golf world, but ``Tin Cup,'' the new romantic comedy starring Kevin Costner and Rene Russo, doesn't cast its lot with the titans of the game, the calculating pros in color-coordinated togs who ply their trade on lush links and exclusive greens.

Nope. Not this movie. The heart of ``Tin Cup'' is with its hero, Roy ``Tin Cup'' MacAvoy (Costner), a gifted but self-destructive good ol' boy who gives lessons at a seedy, small-time West Texas driving range.

Surrounded by admiring buddies, Roy whiles away the days drinking beer and making idle bets - till he becomes smitten with a tart-tongued psychoanalyst (Russo) who comes to him for lessons. Determined to impress her and recapture his lost potential, he embarks on an unlikely quest to win the U.S. Open, assisted by his best friend and caddy, Romeo (Cheech Marin).

``Golf has a reputation as an elitist, Republican game, but most of the courses in this country are public courses, populated by regular, blue-collar guys who are lined up waiting for a tee time, trying to get five hours by themselves,'' said Ron Shelton, the movie's director and co-writer. ``These guys watch the PGA stars on TV playing on these elite courses they'll never get on, and that becomes the promised land. This movie is really about a quest - it's picaresque, with Costner and Cheech Marin playing Don Quixote and Sancho Panza heading for the land of Oz.''

Indeed, the movie ``Tin Cup'' comes across as anything but elitist, trading instead on a populist touch and a salty, accessible, down-to-earth charm. That approach has a lot to do with Shelton, a former minor league ballplayer who set out to become a screenwriter and spent 10 years writing and working at blue-collar jobs - ditch digging, framing houses and selling appliances at Sears - before he got a break.

``I always identify with characters on the outside,'' said Shelton, who has set several of his movies in the sports world, including ``Bull Durham,'' ``White Men Can't Jump'' and ``Cobb.''

``I get along great with the cast and crew on my movies because I relate to them, but I don't `interface well,' as they say, with the studio executives.

``I work in Hollywood, because that's where movies are made, but I've always felt like I live on the fringes, and I'm much happier there.''

That outsider status is bolstered by a streak of contrariness that Shelton wields proudly, like a sword.

``When I set out to do this movie, everybody said, `Golf? What a stupid idea!' and I said, `That's right! That's me!'' Shelton said with a gleeful smile. ``There's a line in the movie where Molly (Russo) says, `This is the stupidest grotesquerie masquerading as a game that I've ever seen,' and Tin Cup says, `That's why I love it.' ''

In person, Shelton comes across like a close cousin of Tin Cup MacAvoy, with his athlete's physique and apparent love of story telling and self-mythologizing.

Now 50, and 15 years into a Hollywood career that has included directing five of the movies he has written, he still cultivates the image of a maverick who relishes the chance to do combat with clued-out studio executives.

``I loved that nobody took screenwriting seriously when I set out to do it,'' said Shelton, a literature major in college who took the craft seriously indeed. ``I thought, oh good, I'm an outlaw. I'm the whorehouse in the border town, and you all are going to be coming to me for my services.''

Shelton's knockout punch was his brainy romantic baseball comedy ``Bull Durham,'' which gave immeasurable boosts to the careers of its stars - Costner, Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon - and won screenplay awards from all the major critics' guilds.

But eight years ago, when Shelton was trying to get ``Bull Durham'' off the ground, he met with nothing but resistance.

``Every single studio turned it down twice,'' he said. ``They kept saying, `Nobody cares about baseball. Women will hate it.' I kept saying, `It ain't about baseball.''

Indeed, the movie was about many other things as well, including literature, religion, the battle of the sexes and the wisdom of the ages.

But Orion, the studio that eventually financed it for $7 million and hired Shelton to take his first shot at directing it, didn't get it. ``While I was filming it, they hated it,'' said Shelton. ``They fired my cinematographer and did all kinds of obnoxious things. By the time I screened it for them, I thought they were going to kill me. Then they saw it and said, `This thing is great! We had no idea.''

In making ``Tin Cup,'' Shelton and Costner set out to cover some of the same territory, but from a reverse angle. While filming ``Bull Durham,'' Costner said he felt he could play the part of his character's nemesis, the talented but undisciplined star pitcher, Nuke (Robbins). In ``Tin Cup,'' he more or less does.

``Roy MacAvoy is like Nuke LaLoush would have been at 40,'' said Shelton. ``He's gifted, but he doesn't use his head. He's this massive underachiever who's invented a mythology about his own failure, and who's surrounded by buddies who keep him on a pedestal.''

Shelton has written movies around the sports of football, basketball, and baseball, but he said golf was by far a greater challenge.

``It is the most impossible sport to turn into a movie, ever,'' he said. ``It's an internal game - there's no drama.'' Working with co-screenwriter John Norville, a frequent golfing partner with whom he ``hammered out a story over a lot of booze and many games of golf,'' Shelton set out to ``overcome the essential boring nature of the sport.''

``I shot the hell out of it, and this movie has 2,200 edits. I came at it like it was a gunfight.''

``I think it worked. I've had women come up to me and say, `I hate golf, but I love this movie, and now I want to take it up again.' I tell them, `That's the happiest review I can get.' ''

An avid golfer and, until recent years, a hard-driving playground basketball player, Shelton says he uses sports backdrops as an arena for widely divergent works, much like the director John Ford used westerns.

``Sports is a universe in which the audience knows the basic rules. Within that, I can challenge their ideas, turn them upside down. The movies aren't about sports, they're about behavior.''

Perhaps Shelton makes the allusion to westerns because he enjoys thinking of himself, in his many conflicts with studio financiers, as a kind of gunfighter.

Warner Bros., the studio that financed ``Tin Cup,'' fought him hard over the ending, pushing for a more conventional, big Hollywood finish.

``I'll never give in, because I don't care,'' said Shelton. ``I just want my movies to reflect my point of view.''

``The hardest part of making movies, by far, is dealing with the studios,'' he continued. ``You have to live in many worlds. You have to keep your guns loaded. And you have to shoot first. I don't know what that means, exactly, but I'll let it stand on the record.''

CAPTION(S):

4 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) Love games

Ron Shelton mixed ro mance and sports in `Bull Durham.' Now he takes a swing at golf in `Tin Cup' with Kevin Costner and Rene Russo

(2) Kevin Costner is a self-destructive golfer who gives lessons at a West Texas driving range in ``Tin Cup.''

(3) Smitten with a psychoanalyst (Rene Russo) who comes for golf lessons, Costner's Roy ``Tin Cup'' MacAvoy decides to impress her by aiming to win the U.S. Open.

(4) Cheech Marin plays MacAvoy's best friend and caddy.