Golf : U.S. Pros Have Turned Scorecards to Eyesores at British Open Course

Royal Lytham and St. Anne’s, with its undistinguished layout sandwiched between rows of red brick Edwardian houses and railroad tracks, has never exactly been the most majestic of courses used for the British Open.

For American golfers, however, it’s been a downright double-bogey eyesore.

In the seven times the British Open has been held at the course in St. Anne’s, Lancashire, no professional from the United States has won. Bobby Jones gets an asterisk for having won in 1926 while an amateur.

The troubles started that year for the Yankee pros. Al Watrous and Jones were tied on the 17th until Watrous three-putted. In 1952 and ‘58, Americans were almost nonexistent in the field. In 1958, for instance, Gene Sarazen, 56 years old and 23 years after he had won his last major tournament, was the best U.S. finisher in 16th place.

In 1963, defending champion Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, the reigning Masters champion, and Phil Rodgers and Doug Sanders were in the American contingent. All lost. Nicklaus needed to shoot par over the final five holes to tie Rodgers and New Zealand’s Bob Charles, but finished with birdies at 14 and 16 and bogeys at 15, 17 and 18, missing a playoff by one. The next day, the left-handed Charles got hot on the greens and beat Rodgers.

And so it goes.

Royal Lytham, where the 1988 British Open will be held July 14-17 for the first time since 1979, has more things to scare a golfer--from any country--than impress him. Most notable are several ruin-your-day bunkers, the flower bed beyond the 18th hole and those tracks for the Blackpool-Preston line.

As Bernard Darwin, the well-known writer of British golf and grandson of naturalist Charles Darwin, said in 1910 in “The Golf Courses of the British Isles”: “The second and third holes are both good, and the railway on the right scares us into a hook: and the hook takes us into a bunker, and the bunker loses us the hole.”

Byron Nelson, in an interview in the July issue of Golf magazine, called his victory at the 1937 Masters the high point of his career, with the biggest accomplishment being 113 consecutive finishes in the money, another record.

Surprisingly, memories of 1945, the year of his record-run with 11 straight victories, he can sometimes do without.

“Well, it was quite a burden,” he said. “I was pleased with it, of course, because I’d never dreamed I could do anything like that, but I was definitely relieved when it was over.

“I’d told my wife at some point during the streak that I wished I would blow up someday to end it. At home that night she asked me whether I’d blown up. I said, ‘Yes, I shot a 66.’ ”

Add Nelson and 1945: “The questions that came up later about the weak fields during the war never bothered me,” he said. “I knew how well I was playing. Comparing then with now, the fields were weaker, no doubt about it, but if I played as well right now as I played then, I would win a lot of golf tournaments--not 11 in a row, but a lot.

“(Ben) Hogan shot the lowest 72-hole score of his career in 1945, 27-under at Portland so he wasn’t hacking around.”

Rankings by the National Golf Foundation puts the Los Angeles-Long Beach metropolitan area as the fourth-worst in the country for supplying adequate public courses, with San Francisco ninth-worst.

The nation’s bottom 10, in order: Jersey City, N.J.; Anchorage, Alaska; New York; Los Angeles-Long Beach; Vineland-Millville-Bridgeton, N.J.; El Paso, Tex.; Laredo, Tex.; Danville, Va.; San Francisco, and Santa Fe, N.M.

The top 10: Naples, Fla.; Ft. Pierce, Fla.; West Palm Beach-Boca Raton-Delray Beach, Fla.; Sarasota, Fla.; Ft. Myers-Cape Coral, Fla.; Pittsfield, Mass.; Lake County, Ill.; Battle Creek, Mich.; Ft. Walton Beach, Fla., and Lorain-Elyria, Ohio.

Golf Notes

Bob Estes of the University of Texas was named the first winner of The Nicklaus Trophy, awarded to the top male college golfer in the country. The trophy, named, of course, after Jack Nicklaus, was established by the Golf Coaches Assn. of America and MacGregor Golf Company. . . . Writer Dan Jenkins, contributing editor of Golf Digest, on today’s professional players and their attitudes toward such prestigious titles as the U.S. Open: “Most of them would wear a turban if someone paid them to endorse it, but there was a time in the not-too-distant past when even the least known among them, were he to win the Open, would have said, ‘Just give me the title, you keep the money.’ ”

The Griffith Park Junior Golf Club is conducting classes for beginner, intermediate and advanced golfers. Al Crawford is in his eighth year as director of the program. For more information: (213) 664-2255. . . . The 17th annual Southern California Women’s Masters, a tournament for club champions from public and private courses, will be held July 11 at Candlewood Country Club, July 12 at California Country Club and July 13 at Sierra La Verne Country Club. More than 60 golfers are expected. . . . Lee Edmiston won the three-day Brookside Women’s Golf Club title recently with a low gross of 261. Mimi Thornton won the low net with a 224.

Seve Ballesteros became the fifth golfer to be immortalized in Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum in London. The others: Harry Vardon (on display from 1921-38), Henry Cotton (1934-39), Bobby Locke (1952-65) and Tony Jacklin (1970-76). . . . Playing the rough: On the way back to her hotel after the opening round of the Ohio Golf Benefit June 20 in Blufton, Ohio, a stop on the Futures Golf Tour, Char McLear noticed hay burning on the back of a truck and the driver unsure of what to do. A paramedic in her hometown of Barrington, Ill., McLear did not hesitate. She pulled over, grabbed a 3-iron out of her bag to spread the hay around and then got her fire extinguisher and put out the fire.

Add Futures Tour: The Homer Hanky, made famous last October when the Minnesota Twins won the World Series, came through again. In an effort to combat the heat during the final round of the Capital Region Classic June 15 in Schenectady, N.Y., Kandi Kessler soaked the towel, given her as a good luck charm by a friend in Minnesota, and wrapped it around her neck. Kessler won the tournament.

Construction is scheduled to begin in early 1989 for a second 18-hole course at Coto de Caza in southern Orange County. . . . Fred Sherman’s North San Diego County women’s tournament will be held Aug. 1-2 at Escondido Country Club. The 36-hole medal-play competition has a handicap limitation of 36, an entry fee of $70 and an 8 a.m. shotgun start both days. The field is limited to 124 players, with entries closing July 18. . . . The ninth annual Matador Golf Classic, which raises money for the Cal State Northridge athletic department, is set for Aug. 22 at Wood Ranch Golf Club. The field is open to 144 players, with a $150 tax-deductible entry fee. For more information: (818) 885-3215 or (818) 885-3208.