SENIORS DO NOT FEEL PAR-TICULARLY HAPPY.

Byline: Dave Shelburne Staff Writer

SANTA CLARITA - All those folks who have wondered over the years how Valencia Country Club might hold up for a U.S. Open? They might want to check out Friday's first-round scores in the SBC Senior Classic.

Tournament leader Tom Purtzer shot 2-under-par 70, Gil Morgan finished 71 and no one else broke par on a day only four players did as well as par.

That's for a senior-tour event that wasn't set up to be especially difficult until winds swept through the Santa Clarita Valley, beginning early Friday morning.

From that point on, it was protect, protect, protect, as Senior PGA Tour's best full field of the year struggled to salvage par on a day hardening greens made pin placements tougher than planned and made birdies seem like eagles.

Chi Chi Rodriguez wound up doing his famous putter-sheathing sword dance on the 190-yard, par-3 third hole after a mere par, and with good reason. Thirty-two golfers in the 76-man field couldn't do even that well on the hole, which played 49 strokes over par, saw two players putt into the greenside lake and three others land in the water via bunker or chip shot.

``Par was a very good score for me,'' said Tom Watson, whose 72 tied Gary McCord, Howard Twitty and Walter Hall for third place. ``I was grateful for that.''

``It made you look silly at times,'' Purtzer said of the wind-dried course, which he compared to a U.S. Open in terms of challenge after a round that included three birdies and a bogey.

``It looked that way to me,'' he said. ``It had that type of difficulty where you felt you could never relax on shots.''

The statistics supported his assessment, as Friday's opening-round average of 75.86 was the highest first round on tour since last year's U.S. Senior Open at Salem Country Club in Peabody, Maine, where only one player broke par in the first round.

With late-day leaderboard players stumbling down the stretch and others struggling everywhere on the course, Valencia seemed poised to challenge for the highest first-round ever on the senior tour - the 78.91 average logged at the 1998 U.S. Senior Open at Riviera Country Club.

Christy O'Connor of Ireland was even par through 15 holes but double-bogeyed the water-flanked, 198-yard, par-3 16th en route to a 73.

It was a similar finish for South Africa's Hugh Baiocchi, who was even par through 16, then took double-bogey on the 449-yard, par-4 17th hole.

Monday qualifier Doug Johnson survived chipping into the water from behind the sloping third green to tie O'Connor, J.C. Snead, Gibby Gilbert, Bruce Fleisher, Jim Thorpe and Larry Nelson for seventh at 73.

Gilbert pushed the hardest down the stretch, following back-to-back bogeys on Nos. 13 and 14 with a birdie-birdie-birdie run through No. 17, but the clear winner Friday was 6,905-yard, par-72 Valencia.

``This is one of the toughest courses we play on the senior tour,'' Watson said. ``Today, with the wind, it made it very difficult to get the ball close to the hole.''

And getting the ball close to the hole was only part of the problem:

``The greens are as quick and treacherous as we've played this year,'' said Morgan, who admitted to choosing caution over valor often.

``Sometimes, you had to back off and hope to fight again on the next hole,'' he said after winning his fight late with a birdie-birdie finish boosted by a little extra incentive.

``I had a bogey on 16, which kind of put me out of it,'' he said, ``and that made me mad enough to make two birdies coming in.''

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Tom Purtzer hits out of a bunker on the 18th hole en route to a par during the opening round of the SBC Senior Classic.

(2) Dr. Gil Morgan watches his tee shot on the third hole Friday in the SBC Senior Classic at the Valencia Country Club.

David Crane/Staff Photographer