Golf : Knight Extends String of Success at El Caballero to 31 and Counting

Helen Knight won the ladies’ championship at the El Caballero Country Club last week at the age of 63, which is somewhat noteworthy. The fact that she also won the club championship in 1957 is a bit more noteworthy.

But if you really want to be knocked off your feet consider this: Knight has also won the ladies’ club championship every year in between.

Every year. Thirty-one in a row . Undefeated in club championship play since the age of 32 . Undisputed champion since the year Floyd Patterson and Carmen Basilio and Sugar Ray Robinson were boxing champions . . . the year the great Lew Hoad won Wimbledon and Warren Spahn won the Cy Young award.

Had enough? Well, Knight hasn’t.

“Every year I just keep looking ahead,” she said. “Last week is over. Now I’ll look ahead to the 1989 championship.”

This, of course, is not good news to the women golfers of El Caballero, even though Knight, who has won the tournament by as many as 30 strokes, may be faltering. Her winning margin for the 72-hole event this year was a mere 14 strokes.

“It’s really an amazing thing,” said El Caballero head pro Terry Lange. “I’ve been here for 18 years and she’s won it every year. And she started winning the championship every year 13 years before I got here.”

Knight’s success didn’t begin at El Caballero. She has been the champion at country clubs in Chicago and Des Moines, too.

“I get quite a bit of kidding each year from the other women,” said Knight, who has an 8-handicap. “They’ll say, ‘Why are we even bothering to have a club championship?’ And I tell them, ‘Because maybe you’ll win it.’ ”

Quite a sense of humor.

Knight knows the streak will end someday. And we all know that someday the sun will burn out. Neither figures to happen real soon.

“At this point we don’t have any real young golfers at the club,” Knight said. “There aren’t any 18 or 20-year-olds. But we do have some very young kids coming up, some 13 and 14-year-olds. And I know someday one of those kids will beat me. That’s the progress of youth. It’s inevitable. I see the handwriting on the wall.”

For more than three decades, the handwriting on the wall at the El Caballero Country Club has remained unchanged. It says, simply: Helen Knight, Club Champion.

Qualifiers: Seven local players have qualified for the Southern California Golf Assn. Amateur Championships, which will be held Friday through Sunday at the Annandale Golf Club in Pasadena.

Michael Zambri and Buz Green of Thousand Oaks, Paul Holtby of Simi Valley and Jimmy Chang of Westlake Village earned four of the seven berths at La Purisima Golf Club in Lompoc.

On the Eisenhower course at the Industry Hills Country Club, Don Baker of Canoga Park took the No. 1 qualifying spot with a 74. Mike Haney of Glendale also qualified with a 78.

At the Stockdale Country Club in Bakersfield, Toshihiro Ezaki of Van Nuys shot a 72 and earned a qualifying spot.