JOB SECURITY WEAK UNDER UN-STERLING OWNER.

Byline: Karen Crouse

The first round of the PGA Tour stop in Pebble Beach was suspended by inclement weather Thursday and Clippers coach Chris Ford was fired.

Yawn. Those aren't news flashes, they're foregone conclusions.

Have you ever known storm clouds not to gather over the Monterey Peninsula or the Clippers this time of the year?

Don't fret for the golfers; they at least have rain gear and umbrellas to protect them from Mother Nature's capriciousness. Pity the poor skippers of the Clippers, who have absolutely nothing to shelter themselves from Donald Sterling's reign.

The surprise isn't that Ford was fired - the Clippers go through coaches the way NBA players go through sneakers - but that he took the job at all. He was drawing a paycheck from Milwaukee at the time of his hiring, so it wasn't money that motivated him. He said last year it was the challenge that proved irresistible.

With only eight days to assemble a team before the start of last year's truncated season, Ford faced a task on par with sucking up the rainwater on Pebble Beach's greens using only a soda straw.

He squeezed nine wins out of the 50-game schedule. This year the Clippers were slightly ahead of their duffer's pace of 1999, with 11 wins in 45 games. But that wasn't sufficient progress, not considering Ford had the Big Bertha of rookies in his bag in Lamar Odom.

The players complained they weren't getting enough direction. Ford shouldered the blame for that when, in fact, the lack of direction starts at the top.

Sterling waited until the lockout was a bitter memory to authorize the hiring of a coach last year, the better to save money. He balked at securing the services for seasons to come of free-agent-to-be Maurice Taylor during the past offseason (the better to save money?). He seems perfectly content to be a third-class tenant in the Staples Center when his Clippers could be lords of the manor in Anaheim.

There's a four-letter word that comes to mind every time Sterling swings into action: F-O-R-E.

We're pretty sure Sterling has exhausted his supply of mulligans. For the love of the game, we wish he'd take his leave of the NBA. Why can't Sterling just sell a majority share of the team to Magic Johnson, already?

If his ego demands that he own a sports team, let Sterling run this city's XFL team, once wrestling kingpin Vince McMahon works out all the kinks in his planned football league.

The more things don't change at the top, the more nothing changes with the Clippers. Sterling is in his 19th season of ownership. His right-hand man, Elgin Baylor, has been the vice president of basketball operations since 1986, which is longer than any other NBA executive save for the Lakers' Jerry West and the Bulls' Jerry Krause.

Meantime, the entrance to the Clippers' locker room has been a revolving door. Since Sterling purchased the team, only 10 players have stayed longer than a single presidential term. Eric Piatkowski, bless his soul, needs to hang on just two more years after this one to tie Loy Vaught's team endurance mark of eight seasons.

At the start of this season, we would have liked the odds of Odom being a Clipper for life. In addition to his marvelous talent, he brought something rarer still to the Clippers' dressing room: rapture.

Alas, it took less than half a season to wipe that radiant smile off Odom's face. By the end of the NBA's mandatory gestation period, we expect he'll be as cranky as a colicky baby.

The real crying shame is that the team can't throw out the Clip Board with the coach.