David Pro

A good short game and some luck can save a golf score. Mark Calcavecchia proved that Thursday. Calcavecchia made three miraculous pars in the middle of his round, then needed only 11 putts over his last 11 holes to shoot a seven-under-par 65 for the first-day lead in the PGA's Greater Greensboro Chrysler Classic in North Carolina. Calcavecchia's bogey-free round at Forest Oaks Country Club was good enough for a one-shot lead over Paul Stankowski.

Corey Pavin packed his slingshot Monday and headed off to Chicago to do battle. That's where the David of pro golf will be taking on several Goliaths this week. The first monster who can mash him is the Medinah Country Club's Course No. 3, where the PGA Championship will be contested over 7,561 yards, the longest track ever in a major tournament. Then, there will be more than a hundred of the human kind, all routinely bashing the golf ball more than 300 yards.

My guess is that when Larry Brown pulls into a gas station in Lawrence, Kan., these days, he doesn't have to get out of his car and clean his own windshield. This kind of thought has to be scary to the people in the UCLA athletic department, who are recruiting Larry Brown as their next basketball coach. The day after Larry's Jayhawks won the national championship, 30,000 Lawrence locals turned out for a welcome-home pep rally.

A federal judge in San Francisco sentenced disgraced track coach Trevor Graham to a year of home confinement Tuesday for lying to federal investigators. Graham once coached Marion Jones, Tim Montgomery and Justin Gatlin. All were later banned for taking performance-enhancing drugs. Jones was released from prison Sept. 5 after completing most of her six-month sentence for lying about her steroid use. It's the second time this month that U.S.

Another Minnesota basketball recruit is in trouble: Freshman forward Royce White faces misdemeanor charges of theft and fifth-degree assault for allegedly shoplifting and shoving a security guard at the Mall of America. Coach Tubby Smith announced indefinite suspensions Tuesday for White and senior guard Devron Bostick for violations of team rules he wouldn't identify. According to the Bloomington city attorney's office, White has a Nov. 17 arraignment scheduled stemming from the Oct. 13 incident at the mall.

After returning from two weeks in Tahiti, a place where reef waves are clean and crisp and Tahitian hospitality is alive and well, I learned that Rockin' Fig is headed to the U.S. amateur championships in Florida! Fig: Yeah, the kid got lucky, that's all I can say. But I'm looking forward to surfing Sebastian Inlet in Florida during Thanksgiving week. The contest will have all the top seeds from the West, Gulf, and East coasts, in addition to Hawaii. But, hey! How was the trip? Beautiful.

The lure of playing on the PGA tour is tempting, but U.S. Amateur champion Sam Randolph already has enrolled for his final year at USC. The 21-year-old Santa Barbara native climaxed a big year by overcoming back spasms and beating Peter Persons in the 36-hole Amateur final at Montclair, N.J. Winning his first major after being runner-up the year before eased the pain of blowing the NCAA championship.

WANTED: For one of the best jobs in Hollywood, a self-starter to entertain 1 billion people for three hours while little trophies are handed out like so many 4-H ribbons. Should be able to talk your way out of embarrassing jams with panache, and keep things exciting even when sound effects editors thank each of their ancestors by name. Must be famous and own a nice outfit. Salary commensurate with experience.

First-time jockeys hardly ever win the Kentucky Derby. Before Saturday, only one Pennsylvania-bred had ever won the Derby. Undefeated horses have a way of stumbling in the Derby. Favorites in the Derby do even worse. But nobody passed on any of these drawbacks to Smarty Jones, who put the lie to the historical obstacles as he mowed down Lion Heart in the stretch and completed a 2 3/4-length win in the 130th Derby before 140,054 at rain-battered Churchill Downs.

State Senate Leader David A. Roberti has been targeted by a triad of old political enemies--abortion rights advocates, gun owners and anti-tax activists--in his toughest election fight since he first went to the Senate in 1971. One of California's most powerful liberal Democrats, Roberti is running hard in a June 2 special election against Republican Carol Rowen, a Tarzana pension consultant backed by a strange-bedfellows combination of abortion rights groups and the National Rifle Assn.