Azinger, Stewart Lead Fred Meyer

Paul Azinger, with a little help from teammate Payne Stewart, held a one-stroke lead Monday halfway through the Fred Meyer Challenge.

Azinger and Stewart combined for a 7-under-par 64 on the 6,889-yard Oregon Golf Club course.

Three teams were at 6-under-par 65, including defending champions John Cook and Mark O’Meara, Greg Norman and Brad Faxon, and Tom Lehman and Bob Gilder.

The tournament, not an official PGA stop, has 12 two-man teams competing for $750,000 in prize money. Nine of the 12 members of the U.S. Ryder Cup team are here.

Given the format, the scores were expected to be lower, but the fast greens gave the players trouble. Expect the scores to drop in today’s final round, several players said.

Azinger, who has won 11 times on the PGA Tour but not since coming back from a successful fight against cancer last year, had five birdies.

“He was the star today,” Stewart said. “I was the motivator. I kept pumping him up and he kept doing what I was telling him to do. He’s a very coachable person.”

Not that Stewart didn’t provide some assistance. He rolled home a 45-foot birdie putt on the par-4, 443-yard 14th hole, then capped the round with a 12-foot birdie putt on the par-4, 449-yard 18th.

“It’s just a difficult golf course,” Stewart said. “You’d better be paying attention because you can sneak them on by pretty quickly.”

“We should import these greens to every course we play on,” Faxon said. The 4-year-old course, designed by

tournament host Peter Jacobsen, is carved out of the woods and farmland overlooking the Willamette River just south of Portland.

And Monday was a postcard kind of day, with the sun reflecting off Mount Hood in the distance.

Azinger is looking for his third Fred Meyer championship. He won it with Bob Tway in 1988 and with Ben Crenshaw in 1991. Stewart won it with Isao Aoki in 1987.

It’s a nice two-day payday. The winners split $100,000. Last-place finishers split $45,000. There’s another $50,000 available in a skins game.