LPGA AT LOS COYOTES : Brower Played Through Pain : Golf: Tour rookie from Villa Park High and Texas Tech has weathered the death of her mother and wrist surgery.

By ROBYN NORWOOD

Sept. 25, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

BUENA PARK — The rookie was back home, and her family and old friends were all around.

Laurie Brower--the best girl ever to play on the Villa Park High School golf team--had her brother, Martin, as her caddie. Her father, Gary, was in the gallery. And here and there, at the pro-am Wednesday and on the Los Coyotes Country Club course Thursday, Brower was greeted and cheered by women who had been her mother’s friends.

“They were saying how much fun she would be having,” said Brower, whose mother, Dorothy, died of cancer in 1989. “This week is kind of old home week. Some of her good friends have been out supporting me, watching me.”

Brower will be 29 in November, but she is just now playing her first year on the LPGA tour. As a youngster, she won the Southern California junior championship twice, and the State junior championship once. She was a promising golfer at Texas Tech--a two-time Southwest Conference player of the year--when she hurt her wrist during LPGA qualifying school in 1986. More than 18 months later, after surgery and rehabilitation on her left wrist, she was getting ready to give golf another go when her mother became ill.

Brower dropped her clubs and went home, as did her brother and his wife, Barbara. Dorothy wanted her children to do what they wanted to do, but what they wanted to do was be with her.

“She had a brain tumor, so she was getting a little lost,” Brower said.

Brower helped her mother and kept playing on the side. She tried qualifying school again, with her mother’s encouragement, but didn’t make it.

“My mind wasn’t in it,” she said.

Two and a half years after being diagnosed with cancer, Brower’s mother died. Afterward, Brower didn’t know what to do. She worked a couple of jobs near home--one, for a pet supply distributor, helped pay the bills; the other, at the Yorba Linda Country Club, kept her close to the game.

When an old friend, Barb Mucha, asked Brower to caddie at some West Coast professional tournaments one year, Brower jumped at the chance. Her bosses even approved.

“You might as well go ahead,” one told her. “It’s as close as you’ll ever get to playing on the tour.”

He was there to own up to his error and cheer her on Thursday, as was her other former boss. Which one it was who lacked faith will remain a secret.

“He’d kill me,” Brower said, laughing.

It was those few tournaments as a caddie that gave Brower a hunger to try to make it again. Last fall, she did, qualifying for the tour by finishing in the top 22 out of 150 or so at the qualifying tournament.

Then, just as her prospects were looking good, the pain in Brower’s wrist returned last winter. She remembered a doctor’s prediction that she would never play again after the 1986 surgery in which a piece of bone was removed. This time, Brower thought the doctor might be right. But she forced herself to make it to a February tournament in Hawaii.

“I was going to go, no matter what,” she said. “I wanted to at least get my bag dirty after I’d come so far.”

Then a strange thing happened. The more Brower played, the less her wrist hurt. She has played all season with little trouble. Her only disappointment is that her golf hasn’t been as good as she had hoped.

“I know I can play better,” she said.

Her best finish is a tie for 18th, but she has missed 12 cuts. Her $17,957 in earnings ranks 133rd on the money list. Her 77 in the first round Thursday means she might be in jeopardy of missing another cut. And unless she sneaks into the top 125 on the money list, she’ll be going back to qualifying school.

If it happens, she’ll accept it and try again. But she knows that a cold, the flu, an aching wrist, can throw off your game for a weekend and take you off the tour for the year. That’s all right.

“I’ve experienced life,” Brower said. “I lost my Mom. I watched her go through all that. Life’s too short to worry about having to go to qualifying school. As long as I don’t quit, all I can do is the best I can.

“I definitely want to give it another shot, don’t get me wrong. But it’s not life and death. . . . You learn to appreciate things. You really do.”