Pac-10 Golf Coaches Take Lesson From USC’s Wood

The most important rule in coaching is that you never, ever, predict that your team will win. If you’re a baseball manager and the top of your lineup reads, “Mays, Mantle, Ruth and DiMaggio,” and you’re playing against the Lancaster Cub Scouts, Den No. 14, you say something like, “Well, we’ve got a chance against ‘em, but I’m afraid of their pitcher, Scout Johnson. He’s got a real live fastball for a 7-year-old.”

If you’re a golf coach and your team consists of Snead, Hogan, Nicklaus and Palmer, and they’re matched against the Wednesday Ladies Club of Pacoima in an 18-hole tournament, you complain that the women have the advantage because their tees have been moved forward.

The Pacific 10 golf tournament runs Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday at the Wood Ranch Golf Club in Simi Valley, and none of the coaches will lead his team into the event claiming the championship or advising officials to save everybody a lot of time by just awarding his players the trophy before the first putt.

Unless, of course, the coaches forget to invoke the Stan Wood Rule.

Wood was the USC golf coach for 25 years, leaving the post in 1980 to concentrate on his public relations firm in Canoga Park, which specializes in planning and overseeing press operations at major golf tournaments. In that quarter-century, the Trojans won the Pac-10 title 15 times and compiled a 462-37 record in dual matches. Among Wood’s players were Al Geiberger and Craig Stadler, and more than 20 other golfers, including Scott Simpson, Tony Sills and Mark Pfeil, who went on to play on the PGA Tour.

Heading into the 1968 conference tournament, the Trojans were a confident and talented bunch, led by Kemp Richardson and Gregg McHatton, who is now the head pro at the Valencia Country Club. USC had won the Pac-10 tournament the past four years, and Wood saw no reason his team wouldn’t win it for the fifth straight time.

And he said so.

“A reporter asked me who the favorite was, and I said, ‘We are.’ I said that because I felt we were the favorite,” said Wood, who was unanimously elected to the Golf Coaches Hall of Fame upon his retirement from USC. “A TV reporter picked up on it and had me on a few days later and asked me the same thing, and I told him the same thing.

“We had a good team. I didn’t want my kids to think I didn’t have any confidence in them. I was asked who I thought would win, and I told them the truth.”

You guessed it. USC lost. Stanford jumped into the lead on the first day of the tournament and USC ended up in second place, despite a 1-2 finish in the individual standings by Richardson and McHatton.

The Stan Wood Rule, then, requires a coach to hedge all bets, to say publicly that comedian George Burns, if he got a good start, might be able to beat Carl Lewis at 100 meters.

With dual matches having pretty much gone the way of the passenger pigeon, there is little head-to-head competition between Pac-10 golf teams anymore and, therefore, a lot of speculation as to which team is favored in this year’s tournament.

USC may get the most votes. The Trojans are ranked No. 7 in the nation. Arizona State is ranked No. 8. They are the only two teams in the conference ranked in the top 20.

Leading the Trojans is Sam Randolph, who won the tournament as a freshman and has finished third each of the past two years. His strongest challenge may come from Arizona State’s Bill Mayfair. Others expected to challenge for the individual title are USC’s Brian Henninger, Alberto Valenzuela of UCLA and George Daves of Oregon, who was the runner-up last year to UCLA’s Duffy Waldorf.

UCLA has won the tournament three of the last four years and is the defending champion.

Play begins Monday at 8 a.m. over the tough par-72, 7,020-yard Wood Ranch course, which carries a whopping 74.8 PGA rating. The 60 golfers will play 36 holes on Monday and single rounds Tuesday and Wednesday.