ALBUQUERQUE — The story during Monday's opening round of the Class AAAA State Golf Championships was not about the low scores at the University of New Mexico Championship Course.

That's because there were darn few of those.

No, the story, as it always seems to be, was more about the weather.

Specifically, the wind.

Gusty breezes whipping across the already-difficult course filled the air with a dusty, dusk-like pall.

"It's like Groundhog Day all over again," said Santa Fe head coach Leonard Baca, as he watched his Demonettes struggle home with an overall score of 394.

Santa Fe's efforts a year ago also were thwarted by swirling wind conditions.

The 106-over par total leaves the Santa Fe girls in sixth place, 44 strokes behind front-running Deming. The Demonettes, however, are just three strokes behind fourth-place Los Alamos.

Individually, the Lady Wildcats' Darian Zachek and Memoree LeCompte of Albuquerque St. Pius X are setting the pace with 80.

Santa Fe's Andrea Grijalva takes the honor among the northern contingent with a 92.

The Hilltoppers' Thomas Herrera is the area boy in the tournament. He sits in a tie for 16th with an 84, 12 strokes behind Deming's Derek Baeza.

"It was a killer the whole day," Herrera said of the conditions.

The wind took its toll on his round during the par-5, 500-yard ninth hole. After pulling out a tough par on the par-3 eighth, Herrera's next tee shot sailed out of control and plopped into a dirt hill on the right of the fairway. His recovery shot was anything but as it cleared the fairway and landed in the dirt on the opposite side.

"That's when it all took a turn for the worse," he said after carding a double-bogey 7.

The girls had their own horror stories of dealing with the breeze.

"The wind kept changing," Grijalva said.

It significantly affected her on the greens.

"Some of my putts, sometimes the wind would make it break before it was supposed to," she said. "It was pretty tough."

All things considered, Baca said he was fairly pleased with the way his squad handled the situation.

"I'm happy," he said. "We played with a lot more confidence than I've seen in weeks."

More important, the Demonettes were anything but discouraged.

"Everybody on the team is ready and looking forward to (today)," Baca said. "That makes me happy to see the enthusiasm they have. If we can take those three or four putts and make them one or two putts, each of them can shave three or four strokes off their score. I think we have a real good chance of finishing in the top five."

The Lady Hilltoppers are angling to move up as well, although they face a large gap to get on the trophy platform. They sit 23 strokes behind Kirtland-Central, which is third after the opening round.

"This was tough, but there were some people who had good scores," Los Alamos head coach Mike Lippiatt said. "Everybody shot about eight or nine shots higher than they should have."

It didn't help the Los Alamos effort that the town received some recent snow, which hampered their practice efforts, said Aislinn McDonald, who tied with Miranda Olinger for the team's best score at 94.

"Our course was in such bad shape that we haven't been practicing very much," McDonald said. "We just haven't had a course to play on."