GOLF : When Swing and a Miss Isn’t Appreciated

The golf season begins when the baseball season ends for many major league pitchers, who, not surprisingly, comprise a group of pretty good golfers.

The Dodgers’ Orel Hershiser has a six handicap. But then he started playing golf when he was 5 at the Lancaster Country Club in Buffalo, N.Y.

Hershiser’s grandfather used to take him to the club and let him play one hole before dinner.

“I never had any professional lessons, but my dad and grandfather were good golfers,” Hershiser said Thursday from Florida. “I still play a lot with my dad and I played with my grandfather until he passed away. Monday, all four Hershiser men are going to play--it’s a family thing.”

The four Hershisers are Orel, his father, also named Orel, and his two brothers--Gordie, 26, who plays in the Dodgers’ minor league system, and Judd, 20, who plays on the golf team for Alabama Birmingham.

Hershiser is scheduled to play in the Bob Hope Classic Jan. 11-15 and the Pebble Beach National Pro-Am Jan. 26-29.

Dodger pitching coach Ron Perranoski said Alejandro Pena, who has a handicap of 11, and Fernando Valenzuela, with about a 12, are the other golfers on his staff.

On the Angel staff, Bert Blyleven is probably the best with a six handicap. The others are Kirk McCaskill Bob McClure and Greg Minton.

“But if we get (outfielder) Robin Yount, I’d imagine he would be the best (on the team)--I hear he is a very good golfer,” McCaskill said. McCaskill, who has been playing golf for 10 years and has about a 10 handicap, plays in charity tournaments in the winter and about four other times on his own. He thinks that pitching has something to do with his ability to play golf well, and conversely, that playing golf in the off-season is good mental practice for pitching.

“From a pitching standpoint, until I’m ready to throw the ball and I’m in the right frame of mind, I won’t do it as well, and it’s the same with a golf swing,” McCaskill said. “If I don’t think I’m going to hit the ball well at that particular shot (or) have any negative thoughts, I’ll probably duff it. Golf is good training and has a similar tempo to pitching.”

Dr. Lewis Yocum, the Angels’ team physician and the associate director of Centinela Hospital Medical Center’s biomechanics laboratory, agrees that both golf and pitching have similarities in rhythm and tempo. But he says similarities apply to position players as well as to pitchers.

“The eye-hand coordination, the reflex action that these people (in baseball) have is much better developed than in a lot of other sports,” Yocum said. “You’re going to find that basketball players, the Michael Jordans, for example, are very adept at golf, but these are the natural athletes, the people that have the ability to pull it together.”

Angel outfielder Chili Davis has the most natural golf swing, said Yocum, who also called first baseman Wally Joyner and pitcher Mike Witt good golfers.

Perranoski said, however, that a baseball swing can ruin a golf swing, which is why pitchers may have the edge over position players on the links. Another factor, he said, is that pitchers seemingly have more time to play golf than everyday players.

“When you are an everyday player, and there are some excellent golfers who are everyday players, they are into a baseball swing, and it’s a lot different than a golf swing,” Perranoski said. “ As a hitter, you try to overpower the ball. If you are a pitcher, you work on rhythm and throwing the ball and you aren’t hitting it all the time. A baseball swing could mess up a golf swing.”

Hockey and golf: Perranoski said the best golfers in other sports are hockey players, explaining: “They are short, stocky, compact, and their swing doesn’t vary.”

Some of the Kings’ players can support that theory, according to former King Jim Fox who retired from hockey two weeks ago and is now director of community and player relations for the club.

“Bernie Nicholls is the best golfer on the team, with a handicap of five,” Fox said. “But all hockey players are probably under a 20 handicap. When they pick up a club for the first time they shoot under 100. It’s similar in the movement, in the eye-hand coordination, contacting a foreign object. Hockey players do not have the fear of missing the ball that I think a lot of people have when they take up golf because they are used to hitting a moving object. It is basically the same thing--except in golf the hands are together, while in hockey the hands are farther apart.”

The Kings say Wayne Gretzky plays golf for recreation and doesn’t really have a handicap, but if he did, Fox said that it would be somewhere between 10 and 15.

Add Hershiser: To Hershiser, golf is seemingly more than just a hobby: “I hope to pass (golf) along to my kids, because it is a lifelong sport,” he said.

In 1982, this is what Hershiser listed as his hobbies, “Rubik’s cube, Pac-Man and electronic games.”

The Southern California golf community lost two prominent members recently with the deaths of Ray Goates and Ray Ditmore.

Goates, golf manager for the City of Los Angeles in 1965-83, died Dec. 5 in St. George, Utah. He was 74.

He was the first and last City golf manager to oversee all 13 courses. The position was eliminated after the passage of Prop. 13.

Ditmore, who died Nov. 11 at 87, served as a golf supervisor for the City of Los Angeles for 45 years. He was best known for the planting of 2,000 redwood trees in Griffith Park in 1933, and the largest redwood grove in the Southland can now be seen near the 14th hole of the park’s Wilson course.

The first course developed in Griffith Park was the barren, nine-hole Riverside course. Part of the Los Angeles Zoo and the Harding course are now on that site.

The Riverside course was originally built by Gen. John Baldwin during the Mexican-American War. In 1847, Baldwin built a mansion with a private golf course in Rancho de Los Feliz. The mansion was wrecked and washed away through the golf course during a storm in 1884.

In 1900, Baldwin’s course was redeveloped by city workers and volunteers and named the Riverside. Golfers played on barren land and sand greens until 1923, when the Wilson course was opened with grass greens.

The Harding course, a completely new grass layout, was built in 1924. In 1937, the Riverside course was renovated and became the Roosevelt course. It was moved in 1962 to its present site across from the Greek Theatre. Parts of the old Riverside and Roosevelt courses were absorbed by the Harding and Wilson courses and the zoo.

Qualifying for the Ben Hogan Tour, the PGA’s new satellite circuit, began last week at various regional sites around the country. While some golfers basked in the sunshine at Palm Desert’s Mission Hills, one of the qualifying courses, 112 others played in 12-degree weather at the Northshore Country Club in Portland, Tex., which borders Corpus Christi.

Here’s how one father, whose son was in Portland attempting to qualify, described it: “Monday, there was chilling rain, no practice round and high winds. Tuesday morning, play was delayed one hour because of frozen greens. There were cold, gusty winds and a chill factor in the teens. My son says all the golfers were wearing caps, gloves and heavy clothing. My son tried to hit (wearing) gloves, but it didn’t work. And when he hit with them off, it felt like his hands broke in two.”

Only two golfers broke par Tuesday--Hugh Royer of Aiken, S.C., who shot a three-under 69, and Tim Fleming of Oklahoma, who had a 71. The top 22 scorers from Portland will advance to the final qualifying round along with the leaders from the other four regionals.

The Ben Hogan Tour is meant to provide a proving ground for golfers who want to play professional golf. There are 30 tournaments scheduled in 1990, each with a purse of $100,000. The tour begins Feb. 1-4 in Bakersfield.

Golf Notes

Former Cal State Northridge golf coach Bill Cullum, the most successful coach in NCAA Division II history, has been elected to the National Golf Coaches Hall of Fame. Cullum, who coached the Matadors for 25 years, will be inducted Jan. 26 at Orlando, Fla. . . . The second annual Kids for Kids junior golf and celebrity-amateur tournament, which benefits United Cerebral Palsy and junior golf activities, will be held Dec. 18-20 at Indian Wells, Marriott Desert Springs, Monterey and Rancho Mirage Country Clubs. An estimated 300 junior golfers are expected to play, including several from Scotland, Japan and Australia. . . . The first Pebble Beach Father-Son Holiday tournament will be held Dec. 26-30 at the Pebble Beach Golf Links, Spyglass Hill and the Links at Spanish Bay. . . . Bob Duden of Portland, Ore., shot a final-round 68 to win the U.S. National Senior Open Golf Assn. fall tournament at Scottsdale, Ariz. . . . The Crystal benefit tournament will be held Jan. 10-13 at Desert Horizons Country Club in Indian Wells. Net proceeds will benefit a local charity. . . . Cal State Long Beach senior Chad Morris and Fresno State graduate Chris Harvey each shot a two-under-par 70 at California Country Club to top the field in the Los Angeles Open amateur qualifying tournament. Bryan Pemberton of USC is the alternate. . . . The PGA Tour will begin its 1989 season Jan. 4-7 with the MONY Tournament of Champions at La Costa Country Club in Carlsbad.