It’s Splish Splash Around the Ranch

I am sure you’ve seen the advertisements for golf balls with so many hundred dimples.

It seems to me that golf balls are getting to be a little bit like child movie stars. The more dimples the better.

I go all those dimples one step further. I have golf balls with 392 dimples and 292 smiles. Like most weekend hackers, I use those cut-up balls when I have a water hazard in front of me, even if it is no bigger than a bath tub.

On a beautiful but blustery Friday, I found a place to get rid of those battered and beaten balls. I visited the Fairbanks Ranch Country Club, where golf is literally a floating craps game.

The world’s finest women golfers, playing in the Kyocera Inamori Tournament, are putting some zip code-sized numbers on the scoreboard through the first two days of play.

But don’t blame the golfers.

I’ve never seen so much water without bikinis, blankets and beer cans lining the shore. I couldn’t believe they held the Olympic equestrian events out here. They could have held swimming, diving, water polo and synchronized swimming--simultaneously.

You don’t need a golf cart to play Fairbanks. Bring a rowboat and SCUBA gear. I’d like to have the concession on ball retrievers. I’d hire Moses as my caddy.

Memberships here cost $50,000 initially and $250 a month. Another $500 a month should handle the golf balls.

In the first month of operation, in fact, 3,000 golf balls were dragged from the 30 acres of lakes. I forgot to ask how many golf bags --or golfers--were discovered at the bottom of the ponds.

Water comes into play on seven of the 18 holes. That may not seem like much, except that water is fully in play on those seven holes. It isn’t a matter of hitting two shots and then pitching over a puddle.

The most interesting hole is No. 14.

“It’s our picture postcard hole,” said Tag Merritt, Fairbanks’ director of golf. “There’s water in front of the tee, water on both sides of the fairway and water in front of the green.”

In fact, the fairway is about the size of a picture postcard.

The 14th fairway is an island between the tee and the green. Hit it onto the island and then hit it off the island. Simple.

Pat Bradley was tied for the lead when she got to that picture postcard on Friday--and scored a double bogey without even hitting the water. However, she spent considerable time on the beach.

She hooked her tee shot into a fairway bunker. She was on the island, and now she had to get off of it.

“I had a six-iron in my hand,” she said, “but I thought about all the trouble in front. I went with a five.”

And she knocked the ball over the green into a trap behind the green. It took her four shots to get down, and she was out of the lead.

Bradley was probably lucky. Her playing partner, Barbara Moxness, hit into the water short of the green and took a triple-bogey seven. She had plenty of company at triple-bogey, and there were a handful of quadruple-bogey eights as well.

Moxness undoubtedly came to No. 14 on Friday thinking it was her private Fantasy Island. After all, she had scored an eagle two on the hole Thursday, holing out with an eight-iron from 126 yards.

Since a computer manufacturer was offering a personal computer to the golfer hitting her second shot closest to the pin on No. 14, Moxness was the winner. She would have been much happier Friday if she hadn’t had to use the computer to total her score.

And No. 14 isn’t the most difficult hole at Fairbanks Ranch. The toughest is No. 7, which is played dead into the wind--and there is wind whipping up the valley from the ocean. It is complicated by the fact that a lake runs along the right of the fairway, with fingerlets groping for slightly errant shots.

“No. 7 is where you’re most aware of the water,” Bradley said.

Most of the players seemed to go out of their way to avoid the water on the right. They would hit to the left side of the fairway and use the 150-yard bush as a target.

“I’ve been aiming for the 150-yard bush for the last two days,” said Charlotte Montgomery, who shot a 68 Friday. “You have a lot more room for error.”

Water is a great intimidator. It is like Patrick Ewing, looming menacingly to those who venture too near. It changes trajectories and game plans.

And Fairbanks has more than just water. If the golf course was a boxer, the water would be its right hook. As Bradley discovered, you can watch for the right hook and get hammered by left jabs in the form of some 200 bunkers, multitiered greens and unpredictable winds.

Unfortunately, most of the publicity this week has related to the condition of the course. The fairways themselves are not in the best of shape, to say the least.

Incredibly, San Diego, with the world’s finest weather, seems to be a difficult place to grow grass. San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium has been forever disparaged for the condition of its turf, though it is said to be in fine shape for the Padres’ Monday night opener. And Torrey Pines came in for considerable criticism during and after the San Diego Open.

I don’t feel so bad about my yard any more.

However, Fairbanks was only opened last June 11. It takes a bit more time than that for turf to establish itself on a golf course.

“This golf course,” Hollis Stacy said Thursday, “is a baby. It’s not in the best of condition because it’s so young--but I think it will be a great challenge.”

I’ll second that.

I understand, for example, that 10,000 pine, sycamore, maple and eucalyptus trees are planted on the course. They are all young now, and don’t really have much of an impact on play.

“In four or five years,” Merritt said, “there’ll definitely be a tree factor.”

“Why,” I asked, “do you need a ‘tree factor’ out here?”

Merritt laughed. I didn’t. What are they putting together? A golf course or a national park?

When are they bringing in the bears?