KA'UPULEHU, Hawai'i — As the Champions Tour teed off yesterday in the 25th MasterCard Championship at Hualalai, the whales were waiting and the wind was not.

"Just another day in paradise," D.A. Weibring grinned, after shooting an 8-under-par 64 that only earned him fourth. Not that he was surprised. Two years ago, he was 20-under Sunday without a bogey and was third.

Any element of difficulty disappeared from Hualalai Golf Club when the elements — specifically the wind — were MIA for the third straight year. Of the 41 players in this winners-only event, only six did not break par, including defending champion Hale Irwin (72).

The average score was 67.537, a first-round record. The most honest assessment came from John Harris, who shot 65 despite two bogeys: "Frankly," he said, after birdieing five of his first seven, "without the wind it's not very hard out here."

Tom Purtzer found it easiest as he broke par here for the 13th straight round and seized a tenuous lead. He bolted to 9-under in the first 13 holes, draining seven birdie putts from within 10 feet and an eagle from 15 feet. He cooled off on the final five holes, including a three-putt par on the 14th, and still finished with a 10-under 62.

That is also a first-round record here, one off Loren Roberts' tournament record and two back of the lowest score in tour history. It hardly offered any separation from a field thriving on Hualalai's benign setting and offseasons that left it rested and clearly ready.

Jim Thorpe chased Purtzer in, opening the 2008 season by playing his first 12 holes in 9-under — lipping out four times. He couldn't keep up, a bogey on the 17th dropping him to 63 with playing partner Allen Doyle.

This is Thorpe's eighth straight year at Hualalai. He has four Top-10 finishes, including seconds in his first and last appearances. He is coming off a win in last year's final event.

"Allen and I both shot 9-under par and I don't think we made anything we shouldn't have made, and we could have been a shot or two better," said Thorpe, 58. "Allen and Dana (Quigley) and I were talking earlier this week that we think you have to average seven birdies a day. When I finished 10 at 7-under par I said, 'OK, I'll start working on tomorrow now.' "

Doyle played the back nine in 30 to close fast; Jerry Pate shot 29 on the back and all it got him was 10th. Weibring needed just 12 putts in his first 11 holes, eagling the sixth from 91 yards out. He was 7-under after the 11th but could convert only one more birdie. It was still better than he expected, after he found a crack in his 4-year-old driver to start the week.

Not that anyone could hit it better than Purtzer, who led the seniors in driving distance (297.6 yards) and Greens in Regulation GIR (76.2 percent) last year, and hit every green yesterday.

"This would really help my scoring average if I could just stop right now ...," said Purtzer, who called Hualalai "defenseless" and "perfect" in the first round. He injured his left elbow in his last event and needed a cortisone shot almost two weeks ago, forcing him to lay off for four days. He did not expect what happened yesterday, although he admitted to sneaking out to chip and putt.

"The biggest thing today is that it helped my confidence," he said. "When you take three months off you're not really sure how things are going to go."

Thorpe sounded awfully sure after the past eight years here.

"You need to have six or seven birdies a day to have a realistic chance to win, unless the wind comes up," he said. "We are all getting a little older out here and a lot of rookies are coming out. I think the trend Hale Irwin set a few years ago, which kind of elevated our game to think we could still win at 58, 59, 60, makes it so that we're going to show those rookies that when they get here it's not a cakewalk. If they want to win money, they've got to earn it."

NOTES

Jim Thorpe, one of two African-Americans on the Champions Tour (with Jim Dent), was supportive of Golf Channel anchor Kelly Tilghman but extremely unhappy with the Golfweek editor who was fired yesterday for putting a noose on the cover of the current issue in reference to Tilghman's controversial comment two weeks ago.

"From knowing Kelly Tilghman it was not a malicious statement," Thorpe said. "She could have said they could take Tiger in a locker room and bust his knee up. That's what she meant. It wasn't a racist comment ... just a bad choice of words. You could put 1,000 words in front of her and 'lynch' wasn't the word she should have used.

"Now, the gentleman from GolfWeek, that was absolutely stupid, just absolutely stupid. Why would you choose to do that? He knew better. ... I don't understand why the editor of this magazine would put a hangman's noose on the cover. What is he trying to say?"

Thorpe said he originally did not want to discuss the issue, but spoke on the subject for 10 minutes. He complimented the magazine for approaching the issue "and making sure we are not going to accept it and trying to get rid of it," but he concluded: "The guy from Golfweek, let him get BBQ'd. It was absolutely a major mistake on his part."

The average winning score here the past two years was 24-under and it's been 20-under over the past seven years, when no winner has had a round in the 70s. ... The par-3 eighth hole was the only one to play over-par yesterday. ... Hualalai's 10th hole was the easiest on tour three of the past four years, but only the fourth-easiest yesterday after Nos. 4, 7 and 14 — all par-5s. ... Until yesterday's 72, Hale Irwin had 12 straight rounds in the 60s here, and was 60-under in that span. ... Punahou's Lorens Chan, 13, shot 66 in Thursday's Pro-Am, with four lip-outs, according to pro partner Bruce Lietzke.

TODAY'S TEE TIMES

SECOND ROUND

10:20—Peter Jacobsen. 10:29—Hale Irwin, Bobby Wadkins. 10:38—Keith Fergus, Scott Hoch. 10:47—Lee Trevino, Bruce Leitzke. 10:56—Dana Quigley, Tom Kite. 11:05—Scott Simpson, Morris Hatalsky. 11:14—David Edwards, Gil Morgan. 11:23—Craig Stadler, Loren Roberts. 11:32—Lonnie Nielsen, Ben Crenshaw. 11:41—Fred Funk, Pete Oakley. 11:50—Curtis Strange, Denis Watson. 11:59—Lanny Wadkins, John Cook. 12:08—Mike Reid, R.W. Eaks. 12:17—Tom Watson, Tom Jenkins. 12:26—Bernhard Langer, Brad Bryant. 12:35—Bob Gilder, John Jacobs. 12:44—Mark Wiebe, Jerry Pate. 12:53—Eduardo Romero, Jay Haas. 1:02—John Harris, Mark McNulty. 1:11—Jim Thorpe, D.A. Weibring. 1:20—Tom Purtzer, Allen Doyle.

Reach Ann Miller at amiller@honoluluadvertiser.com.