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The record book will say that metronomic Mark Brooks shot a safe and sound round of 2-under-par 69 to win the Kemper Open by three shots yesterday at Avenel with a 13-under total of 271. What it will not show is the search-and-destroy, sixth-hole triple-bogey calamity suffered by co-runner-up Bobby Wadkins, clearly the people's choice but a non-winner one more agonizing time.

Long before the TV cameras were even clicked on on this sticky, overcast day, the tournament turned on Wadkins's debatable decision to try to carry a tricky second shot onto the sixth green in hopes of expanding a one-shot lead he held over Brooks going into the 520-yard hole.

Wadkins made the full-throttle choice even after Brooks had put his second shot into a creek guarding the long, narrow green. Instead of going forward, however, Wadkins's second shot became a lost ball when it hit a tree almost directly in his path to the flag and ricocheted into a heavily wooded area. Many spectators among the record crowd estimated at more than 50,000 looked in vain for his ball, and that one shot eventually knocked him off the top of the leader board and ultimately cost him the tournament.

After a front nine 4-over 40, Wadkins recovered somewhat on the back nine to shoot 74 and got himself into a second-place tie with another steady veteran, Texan D.A. Weibring, at 10-under 274. Weibring shot 68 yesterday, but finished with five straight pars after missing eminently makable birdie putts of 10, 15, 12 and 20 feet.

Left-handed Phil Mickelson, the 23-year-old future of golf, got into the hunt late at 10 under with birdies at the 13th and 14th holes. But he posted bogeys at 15 and 16 to fall out of contention as fast as he got into it. A 10-foot par-saving putt at the 18th allowed him to tie for fourth with Lee Janzen at 9-under 275.

Janzen, the U.S. Open champion, had the best round of the day, a 66 that gave him his highest finish this year two weeks before he defends his title at Oakmont near Pittsburgh.

Brooks, a 33-year-old native of Fort Worth who led after the first two rounds and trailed Wadkins by two strokes going into the final 18, was offering no apologies for his fail-safe round of 69 punctuated by a 15-foot birdie putt at the final hole.

That one last stab made him the only player in the field with four rounds in the 60s. Almost immediately, he was surrounded in the middle of the green and happily hugged by his daughters, 8-year-old Lyndsay and 4-year-old Hollie and his wife, Cynthia, all giddy with his fourth PGA Tour victory and the $234,000 winner's check.

"The whole script worked out pretty good for me," Brooks said. "I had a relatively mistake-free week. ... I'm not too proud. If I win by one or three, it doesn't matter to me."

What matters to Wadkins, a 42-year-old Richmond native, is that he's still never won a tournament in 20 years on tour. But he also insisted he would not second-guess his decision to go for the sixth green and not lay up on a hole Brooks sarcastically described yesterday as "an exciting hole ... for the spectators."

Wadkins was 13 under as he stood on the slightly dogleg-right sixth, a hole almost every pro in the field could easily reach in two shots with a well-placed drive from the middle to left side of the fairway. But Wadkins drove down the right side, and there was a towering oak blocking his direct line to the green, about 195 yards away.

He said he tried to hit a "high, carving 2-iron just to get it up there and have a chance for a 3, 4 or 5. I came out of the shot a little early. It was an ugly shot."

Actually, it was the first of several. The ball almost immediately bonked a tree, and then the search began. At least 50 spectators, and even a few journalists walking with the final group, waded into the heavy underbrush to the right of the green. After the rulebook-allotted five minutes to search, at least a half-dozen balls were found, none of them Wadkins's Titleist 7.

Brooks wasn't able to find his ball in the creek either. But he put his fourth shot safely on the green, about 15 feet from the hole.

Wadkins went back to where he hit his second shot and essentially made the same play, with the same 2-iron. This time, his ball barely brushed the same tree's leaves and landed in a sand trap to the right of the green. By his own description, he "butchered" his fifth-shot sand blast, and it landed in the short fringe between the trap and the green. His chip got to within eight feet of the hole, and after Brooks saved par by making his a 15-footer, Wadkins missed his putt for double bogey putt and tapped in for what he called "a simple eight.

"If I had to do it over again, I would pull it off 70 percent of the time," Wadkins said, asked if he was second-guessing himself. "So I'd do it again. ... I can't repeat was going through my mind after that. I tried to change my philosophy real quick. ... Hey, make some birdies and you can still win."

Asked about Wadkins's decision, Brooks said: "I don't think it was a dumb shot. I don't think he'd lay up if he had it to do over again. ... If he did, he'd hit a 2-iron low slice around and under the thing. ... He only had 200 yards. He could have pulled it off.

"If he pulled the shot off, it could have been a different day."

But after the sixth hole, Brooks stepped onto the seventh tee with a two-shot lead over Wadkins and Weibring, playing just ahead in the next-to-last group. Now it was time for his own change in focus and philosophy.

"It shifted more to the other guys," Brooks said. "I didn't have to focus on him to a point where now I'm thinking I've got to stay two, three, four shots ahead."

And for the most part, that's precisely what Brooks did all the way home, not to mention making some very vital par saving putts. He never allowed any of his pursuers to get any closer than two shots, the margin when Weibring birdied the 13th hole, his last birdie of the day.

Brooks made a 15-footer to save par at the third hole, a five-footer at the fourth, that 15-footer at the sixth and a tricky three-footer at the seventh. He also knocked in par-saving putts of 10 feet at the 11th and six feet at the 12th, allowing him to run off a string of 13 straight pars from the fifth to 17th holes.

"I tried to stay focused and tried to stay with my game plan — not real conservative, but not real reckless either," he said when it was over. "I just kept doing my thing, doing my deal. That's all I could do."

And all that Bobby Wadkins could not do, on a sixth hole at Avenel he nor anyone who saw it is soon likely to forget.

© Copyright 1994 The Washington Post Company

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