FULL COURSE MENU : Golf’s Booming Popularity Forces Players to Contend With Obstacles More Difficult : Than Those About the Greens
It’s early on a Saturday morning and you’ve already mowed the lawn, trimmed the shrubs and shampooed the dogs. Now you decide you’d like to play a little golf. With nearly 50 golf courses within a 45-minute drive of the Valley, that shouldn’t be a problem. You grab the clubs and off you go, searching for that secluded, uncrowded little gem of a course for a quick 18 holes.
Six hours later you pull back into your driveway. You have not played golf. You have, however:
* Been told by the starters at 11 courses that they might be able to get you out on the course closer to the end of the month. Well, not the end of this month, but the next month that begins with the letter N.
* Been briskly ushered out of five marble-floored clubhouses as rich people smirked at you. You heard one elderly lady with day-glow hair mumble to her friends, “The trash. He probably had to drive himself here.”
* Been informed by officials at 13 other courses that this particular Saturday the course is reserved for people with either the last name of Thompson or the first name of Al, provided, of course, those people have valid city golf registration cards beginning with an even number and ending with an odd number.
You have just learned the hard way that trying to play golf in the Valley can be as enjoyable as having a sharp metal seat spring snap loose beneath you during a drive to Palmdale.
If you can somehow sneak out of work or school during the week for a round of golf, you face only ridiculous problems of overcrowding at golf courses. If Saturday and Sunday are the only days you can play golf, you’re looking at a situation that would make Job snap, “C’mon, I’ve had enough of this!”
Very simply, there are too many golfers and too few golf courses. It is a problem that has plagued local golfers for many years, but also one that has, in the past three or four years, turned from just somewhat of a problem into a nightmare.
Example: Every Saturday at 4 a.m., as many as 50 golfers huddle together in the cold and darkness at the Knollwood Country Club in Granada Hills, waiting. And waiting. They have dragged themselves out of bed at 3 in the morning and now stand in line, sipping coffee and stomping their feet and doing everything short of propping their eyelids open with golf tees in an effort to stay awake.
What are they waiting for? To play golf that day, with sunrise still some two hours away? Of course not. These golfers have come to Knollwood in the middle of the night just to obtain a reservation to play the following Saturday.
“The first time I did this, I know my wife didn’t believe me,” said Reginald Anderson, 42, of Sepulveda, who was 28th in the line at 4:10 a.m. on a recent Saturday. “I know if we had another car she would have followed me.”
There are no statistics on how many people play golf in the Valley--a spokesman for the North Hollywood-based Southern California Golf Assn. said he wouldn’t dare estimate--but those who do estimate say the number ranges from “far too many” to “way too many.”
Nationwide, the statistics on the surging interest in golf are startling. The National Golf Foundation in West Palm Beach, Fla., put the number of golfers in the United States in 1985 at 17.5 million. By last year, that number had soared to nearly 23 million, or one of every 10 people in the country. The NGF estimates that by the year 2000, there will be more than 30 million golfers. Currently, golf is a $20 billion annual industry nationwide.
And, in densely populated metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles, the problem of overcrowded golf courses is going to get much, much worse. The NGF estimates that just to keep pace with the skyrocketing interest, at least one new golf course must be built every day in the United States. That is not happening, and probably never will.
“The number of courses is increasing but certainly not as fast as the numbers of people who want to play on them,” NGF spokeswoman Kit Bradshaw said. “In 1987 we had 110 new courses built. Last year 211 more were built. That’s just not enough.”
California leads the nation with an estimated 2.5 million active golfers, but it has only 836 golf courses. Last year, only 12 new courses were built in the state. In Florida, 35 courses were built in 1988. That state leads the nation with 932 courses.
In the Valley area, the chance for any new golf courses is remote. Land value has almost made golf course construction prohibitive. Only in the fringe areas of Los Angeles County are new courses even being considered.
The spiraling numbers of golfers and the fairly stagnant number of courses in the area have led to virtual bumper-to-bumper golf cart traffic at local courses. Officials at public courses such as Knollwood pack the courses with as many as 400 golfers a day, creating backups that can stretch a round of golf into an endurance test. And those are the fortunate golfers who can even get a tee time.
Other congested public courses, such as the Balboa and Encino municipal courses, handle as many as 450 to 500 golfers a day, spokesmen at those courses said.
Trying to reserve a weekend starting time on city or county-run courses skims that fine line between ridiculous and unbelievable. For such courses as Balboa, Encino and Hansen Dam, the City of Los Angeles requires a golf registration card. Reservations can then be made over the phone, or so the theory goes. In practice, getting a reasonable tee time--after 6:30 a.m. and before 5 p.m.--can drive one to the verge of lunacy.
Here is an excerpt from the reservation instructions printed on the city golf card:
“Golf Reservations All Courses Call 520-3512 (Except Harbor Park) for Harbor Park call 638-3266 Monday & Tuesday, 6 a.m. to 4 p.m., Wednesday, Thursday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Fridays 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
“Monday--6 a.m. to 9 a.m., Saturday only.
Tuesday--6 a.m. to 9 a.m., Sunday only.
All other reservations 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. EXCEPT FRIDAYS 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.”
Following that double-talk is a list of 13 city-run courses with individual phone numbers and the instructions, “Call Same Day Only.”
All of which often makes a golfer want to slam a 5-wood off someone’s shins.
“It’s impossible,” Alec Thompson of Woodland Hills said. “You try to follow their instructions and when you call at the right time you can’t get through. I used to dial steady for 45 minutes to get a tee time. Then the phone finally rings and no one answers. When you do somehow get through to the starter, you end up with a tee time that you can’t use. Like before the sun comes up.”
Sometimes, the constant battle for reservations can make a golfer bitter.
“The worst thing is trying to play on a nice course like Rancho Park (in West L. A.) on a Wednesday,” Bob Gibbons of Northridge said. “That’s doctors’ and dentists’ day. I’m convinced they slip the starter some money and get on whenever they want to . . . The golf course is a good place to go if you’ve got a toothache, but a lousy place if you want to play golf.”
The alternative to fighting the waves of golfers at public courses is to join a private country club. For the average person, this will require nothing more than a quick trip to the bank. In the middle of the night. With an acetylene torch and dynamite.
The Braemar Country Club, which features a fine golf layout in Tarzana, is near the low end of the financial scale. The initiation fee is $8,000. Dues are $188 per month.
Some of the slightly more upscale clubs, such as the El Caballero Country Club in Tarzana, don’t even like to discuss money. A spokesman for that club told a reporter who had asked the price of a membership, “We won’t release that type of information. We don’t make our financial policies available to the public. Perhaps if you sent us a little note we might be able to help you.”
How precious. El Caballero is, apparently, Spanish for “The Big Secret.”
The real top-scale clubs, however, have no objections to discussing their membership fees.
The Valencia Country Club in Valencia, one of the area’s finest public courses until it was purchased in 1987 and made private, asks a cool $50,000 initiation fee and $200-a-month dues. And then--perhaps to prove that even very wealthy people can maintain a sense of humor--the club demands that members pay $15 a day if they want to use a golf cart.
Valencia--which consists of only a golf course--sold 400 such memberships in 12 months and has closed the list.
At Wood Ranch Golf Club in Simi Valley, a charter, lifetime membership costs $60,000. The membership cannot be transfered to another family member, but when the golfer dies, the $60,000 is returned to his estate. This plan sounds like a good deal for an 89-year-old golfer who hasn’t been feeling well lately. Other membership plans at Wood Ranch can be had for just less than $20,000.
At the other extreme for golfers are places like Van Nuys Golf Course, several acres of land in the heart of the Valley contained on all four sides by towering chain-link fences. Inside is a miniature golf course, a practice range with more than 100 stations and three separate, nine-hole golf courses. You can spend an entire afternoon playing golf and hitting practice range balls and get change from a $10 bill. It is a fine place to hone your skills.
The Van Nuys Golf Course, however, doesn’t offer much scenery. Anyone who enjoys the serenity and the view at this course could be made absolutely giddy by a day of salmon fishing in the Los Angeles River.
But with all the obstacles, golfers endure.
“The game is really addictive,” said Mike Peck of the Southern California Golf Assn. “Golfers will put up with tremendous burdens for a chance to play a round of golf. With all the hassle, golfers still want to play golf. You just get hooked. You always want to play more often than you can play.”
For proof of golfers’ willingness to suffer for their sport, let’s hear from Bob Taranto of Granada Hills, a former member of the L. A. Sheriff’s Department bomb squad and now a member of Elkins Ranch Country Club in Fillmore.
“It was just about impossible to play golf in the Valley any more,” he said. “I did that thing at Knollwood for a long time. I was there at 4 a.m. with the rest of the jerks.
“I hated every minute of it. And I did it for 10 years.”