Ahearn leads by one after 65

Put the corporate outings on hold. Jim Ahern is on a roll.

Ahern, whose success at top-dollar golf camps far outweighs his success as a tour pro, is close to catching up. He shot a 7-under-par 65 today for a one-stroke lead over Tom Kite and Walter Morgan in the first round of the Tradition.

Only a handful of others were close as the Cochise Course at Desert Mountain, set up for the first Senior PGA major of the season, played tougher than Ahern could remember.

"If you drive it in the rough here, you've got problems," said the resident of nearby Paradise Valley. "They've got some thick rough. They had to be spending some money on fertilizer here, I'll tell you, because that rough is tough."

Larry Nelson was alone in fourth at 68, with Jay Sigel, Bob Dickson, and Vicente Fernandez at 69.

Kite had the second-best round of his rookie season, but the course took a toll of other noted players.

Four-time Tradition winner Jack Nicklaus, who designed the course, was eight shots off the pace in a group that also included two-time Tradition champion Gil Morgan, defending champion Graham Marsh and Senior rookie Lanny Wadkins.

Bruce Fleisher, the only player to win two titles this year, shot 74, and Hale Irwin, who won 21 times in three previous seasons, continued his 2000 struggles with a 4-over 76.

While others were making headlines, Ahern toiled in obscurity on the PGA Tour during the 1970s, never finishing higher than ninth in 60 tournaments.

He lost his tour card before the 1976 season, which he considers a blessing.

"I couldn't play good enough," Ahern said. "I didn't belong out there. But I think I belong out here now."

He went to work as the head pro at the Des Moines Golf and Country Club in 1980 and five years later founded Executive Golf Ltd., overseeing 100-guest golf weekends for clients like Ford and Lincoln-Mercury.

But Ahern kept his eye on the senior tour, and played in 16 events last year after he turned 50 in February. He picked his spots between golf outings, won the Canada Senior Open and finished with $478,963 as one of the tour's success stories.

Ahern, seeking to improve on a string of so-so performances in seven previous events this year, broke out of a three-way tie with Kite and Morgan with the last of his eight birdies on No. 16.

He hit a huge drive to the edge of a sandy wash, leaving himself a 92-yard shot that landed within 12 feet. Aware that all the greens on the mountainside course slope toward Phoenix, Ahern played the downhill putt to break left, and it curled in as a spectator yelled, "Turn, turn."

But Ahern thought the turning point was on No. 5, where he chipped in from 30 yards. It helped him overcome his only bogey of the round on the fourth hole, and got him back to 2-under early on.

Kite had three birdies on each side and acknowledged that he was just finding himself as a senior.

"This felt like a Tom Kite round today," said the winner of 19 regular tour events.

Morgan, who didn't play the PGA Tour because of a 20-year Army career, also made six birdies in a bogey-free round. But he made all of them on the back nine in an extraordinary surge that included three putts longer than 15 feet.

"It's tough for a guy who never won on the regular tour, so I've got to do it out here," Morgan said.

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