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SEEING RED ON GREEN : Unusual Sand Trap on No. 6 at Riviera Even Gives the Pros Problems

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Times Staff Writer

Imagine the fun if you were allowed to put obstacles of your choosing on the playing field of a major sporting event.

Wouldn’t a dozen ice-fishing holes at the blue line during the Stanley Cup finals be a riot?

How about erecting a reef at the midpoint of the America’s Cup course?

Does the thought of putting a pair of stuffed, snarling mountain lions along the homestretch of the Kentucky Derby make you smile?

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Or maybe digging a huge, gaping sand trap in the middle of a green at a prestigious course such as the Riviera Country Club.

But if that last suggestion really sounds like a beauty, forget it. It has already been done.

Billy Bell and George Thomas were the culprits. They did it more than 60 years ago. And 60 years certainly seems like plenty of time to have gotten it fixed. But the crater they dug smack in the middle of the sixth green on the fabled course was still there on Thursday during the opening round of the Nissan Los Angeles Open.

Perhaps the damage hasn’t been repaired because Bell and Thomas were the course architects. A couple of real jokers, it seems. The types of guys who would probably list Jack Webb of “Dragnet” as their favorite comedian.

And the fact that the elephant-sized hole was included in the design blueprints and was not the work of pranksters with shovels has not made it any more popular with the players.

Billy Casper once lofted a shot onto the green at the 170-yard, par-3 hole but found the trap sitting between his ball and the pin. Enraged at what he perceived as a mockery of the game of golf, Casper took out his pitching wedge and readied himself for a chip off the green’s surface, over the trap and back onto the green.

His preparations included three practice swings, all of which stripped huge clods of the finely manicured and precisely clipped grass from the putting surface. He then chipped to within a few inches of the pin, made his par and stalked off the green.

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The pros are still allowed to chip from the putting surface, but that practice is not allowed by the members.

Thursday, the pin was placed 20 feet in front of the green trap and was not of much concern to the accurate-shooting pros. Later in the tournament, however, the pin will be moved to the green’s upper tier and players will be forced to contend with the trap as they shoot for the pin. It is the only such hole on the PGA Tour.

One player during the opening round, Steve Brodie of Long Beach, dropped his tee shot on the very edge of the trap and it appeared that he would be the first of the 1989 tournament to blast out of a green with a sand wedge. But his ball stopped on the precipice and then began a slow and methodical roll down a slight hill toward the flag. It stopped 5 feet away.

Brodie was apparently so thrilled by his escape from danger and his good fortune that he promptly rolled his 5-foot putt 3 feet past the cup. He did, however, recover for a par.

Surrounding the sixth green were dozens of Riviera members and others who have played the course. And they exchanged nods and sly grins at Brodie’s encounter with what the L.A. Open media guide calls the “notorious giant-killer.”

Dan Felder of Santa Monica plays Riviera regularly, he said, and playing No. 6 brings him roughly the same amount of pleasure as having a stiff comb dragged briskly across his upper lip.

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“Most of us who shoot in the 80s and 90s start worrying about that damn trap about the second or third hole,” Felder said. “It can be a nightmare. You hit what is a perfect shot for the average golfer, and you’re either in the damn thing or behind it with no chance for a par. There have been days I swore I was going to come back here at night with a tractor and fill that thing in.”

Another weekend golfer, Mike Sullivan of Redondo Beach, said he had played the course once, in 1987. He has taken exactly one shot from the sixth tee in his entire life. Guess where it landed?

“It flew right into the trap, about 6 inches from the side,” he said. “I had to stand on the green and bend over and reach down about 3 feet to the ball. It felt like a miniature golf course. One of the guys I played with was laughing like mad. He told me, ‘Wait until the next hole. It has a clown’s face and you’ve gotta putt the ball up his nose.’ ”

Not everyone, however, views the trap as a problem.

“I played here a few times and had trouble with that thing a few times,” said Willie Wilson of Long Beach. “But it was fun. I played a course in South Miami years ago and it had a tree in the middle of the green. A big palm tree. And I had trouble with that, too. But even that was fun.”

Wilson, one would assume, might really slap his knee and howl if he had to putt through a pond.

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