Blewett’s Performance Disappointing Despite All Comforts of Home

Mike Blewett began his round on the 10th hole in the opening round of the NCAA golf championships, had made the turn at the clubhouse and was headed down the sixth fairway when he realized that he had chewed up too many golf balls already and might not make it through the last three holes.

So after he putted out on the sixth hole, he looked around and spotted a house less than 30 yards from the green. He stole off the course and quickly climbed the steps leading to the back door. The door was unlocked and he slowly turned the knob and entered the house. Once inside he rummaged through a closet and found a dozen new golf balls beside the vacuum cleaner. He grabbed them and ran. But as he neared the door, inches from a clean escape, a figure emerged from the kitchen. Someone was home.

“Hi, mom,” Blewett shouted. “Gotta’ run.”

And off he went to rejoin his partners on the tee at No. 7.

There are home-course advantages in golf, and then there are home - course advantages. Blewett, a 23-year-old senior at USC, was enjoying the second type of home-course advantage. His parents live less than a wedge shot from the sixth green at North Ranch Country Club in Westlake Village, site of the 1988 NCAA championships. Blewett had played this course so many times he could do it at night. He knew this because earlier in the month, after his graduation ceremony at USC and a subsequent celebration involving many bottles of beer, he had played this course at night.

“I was a little groggy, but I got a few clubs and went out and played the sixth hole,” he said. “I didn’t do real well.”

The good news is that Blewett did better on the course in the NCAA championships. The bad news is that he didn’t do as well as he would have liked. He struggled to a 7-over-par 79 in Saturday’s final round and finished with a 72-hole total of 302. That was 18-over-par and 18 strokes behind the winner, E. J. Pfister of Oklahoma State.

His performance hurt even more because his parents, several cousins and many close friends were there to watch.

“I don’t think it affected me at all, being so close to home and having everybody out watching,” he said. “I just played badly. After the first day I tried to shift it into fifth gear and take off, but I blew my engine. It’s been a disappointing week. A very disappointing week. Some days you get up and you’ve got the right feeling. Other days you don’t and you search for it. I never found the feeling, the confidence.”

Blewett’s collegiate career is over now. After a brilliant beginning in which he tied for the individual title as a freshman in the Pacific 10 Conference championships and was a third-team pick on the All-American team, that career slid downhill. He took a year off after his junior season and played no competitive golf, then returned for his senior season. He never reached the level of play he enjoyed in 1984, however.

“College golf wore me out,” he said. “When I left the golf team last year it was just because I wanted to go to college. I found out that you can’t do both. They just don’t mix. Places that put so much emphasis on golf like Oklahoma State . . . they’re just kidding themselves. They should call it the Oklahoma Academy of Golf.”

Blewett admits he did not take golf very seriously at USC. And that, he said, is why he’s now ready to tighten the laces on his white shoes and get into the tough world of professional golf.

“I’ll turn pro in August and go to the PGA qualifying school in October,” he said. “If I don’t make it, I’ll play the Australian Tour this winter. I’m glad college golf is over. College was a time for fun, a time to be irresponsible and laugh it up. It is not a time to devote your life to golf. That’s over now and it’s time to go out and get slapped around by the real world.

“Golf is important to me. Now that I’m willing to devote myself to it and practice, I think I can make a living at it.”

As Blewett prepared to leave North Ranch Country Club in the fading light of Saturday for the two-minute drive out of the parking lot and into his parents’ driveway, he paused for a moment and looked back at the clubhouse.

“That was it,” he said. “My last college golf. And I’m glad. But I know as soon as I get home I’m going to start to miss it. The guys on the USC golf team are my best friends. And I’ll miss them a lot. This was the end of all that. But I know that it’s also the beginning of something else. And I think it will be something even better.”