Golf / Rich Tosches : A Look at a Slice of Life and Other Maladies

You’ve watched all the tapes and listened to all the advice from the professionals. You’ve tried to duplicate the swing Jack Nicklaus preaches. But still, when you swing a golf club, the act has all the grace of a person trying to fend off the attack of a starving badger.

Obviously, the pros don’t know your problems. But perhaps another amateur does. Just maybe you should get your advice from another golfer who routinely tops the ball and sends screaming missiles along the ground, or from a guy who occasionally shanks a 6-iron so horribly that his playing partners have started wearing motorcycle helmets and athletic cups on the course.

Let’s raise a couple of the most basic golfing problems, and then let a distinguished panel of non-experts offer advice on how to correct them. This panel was hastily organized during a recent visit to the practice range at the Van Nuys Golf Course, an hour during which so many bad swings and errant shots were observed that it seemed rather remarkable that no one was killed or hospitalized.

Slice-- This is perhaps the most common ailment among golf swings. A rapid left-to-right movement by the ball that can result in the ball going into a lake or landing out of bounds. In severe cases, the ball can sail completely off the course and cause extensive property damage in residential areas. This is why you never, ever have your name or even your initials stamped on your golf balls.

“When I start slicing, I can usually correct it by shifting my feet,” offered Lee Hansson, 23, of Tujunga. “If I line them up more to the right, it usually straightens it out. But if it doesn’t, then the ball is gone because it still slices real bad and I was already aiming it to the right.”

Hook-- The opposite of a slice, or the thing that pierces the lip of a fish. Both cause great anxiety for the creature most directly involved. This right-to-left movement of the ball is caused by too much topspin, which causes the ball to roll great distances upon landing. Whereas a sliced ball normally hits a water hazard on the fly, a hooked ball tends to screech into the lake from the ground. Same penalty.

“I used to hook the ball all the time, but I don’t do it very much anymore,” said Wayne Carbone, 44, of Simi Valley. Carbone had, however, put three consecutive world-class, howling hooks into the heavy fence protecting cars on the left side of the practice range with his driver just moments before he was asked for his advice.

“My problem, though, is when I bring my right hand down more on the side of the club to stop hooking the ball, then I slice it,” Carbone said. “Always seems to be one or the other.”

Perhaps the best advice on the game of golf, or at least the most reassuring, came from a seemingly accomplished golfer, Mel Berger, 52, of Tarzana, who whacked ball after ball down the middle of the range, each one cutting a straight line as it soared toward the 275-yard marker.

“I’ve played golf for 35 years,” Berger said. “I shoot in the mid-70s.

“And every time I draw my club back, I honestly feel like I have no idea what’s going to happen next.”

If Berger thinks he has a problem, he should take a glance at the left shin of Dave Yee of Westlake Village, which has a lump on it the size of a golf ball.

Yee got the lump earlier this month when a friend and playing partner, Richard Long, smacked him with what must rank as one of the most errant shots in golf history. Yee and Long, playing again at Knollwood a few weeks after the accident, confirmed details of the bizarre story.

Long, who has only played golf for a year and perhaps, he said, only a dozen times in that year, had teed up his ball on the first hole at Balboa. Yee, also a novice golfer, was standing off to the right side but slightly ahead of Long.

Scenario for disaster, right?

Wrong.

Long, realizing the danger his friend might be in, asked him to move back. And Yee did, walking back toward the ball-washer and now standing behind his friend.

Long proceeded to take a mighty swing at the ball. And he whiffed. But instead of stopping his erratic swing at the top, he whipped the club back down, somewhat in frustration, and then the club hit the ball, sending it rocketing backward about 15 feet before its flight was abruptly halted by the left shin of Dave Yee.

“It was horrible,” Yee said. “I fell down and was screaming.”

“I couldn’t believe I did it,” Long said. “I’m really a bad golfer. I know that. But this was just really stupid of me. He didn’t talk to me for a week. But I sure learned a lesson.”

Yee, one would hope, also learned a lesson: When Richard Long is teeing it up, stay in the clubhouse. Or stand directly in front of him

Indoor games: “He’s got a long, downhill putt here, Lee. He strikes the ball and . . . oh, no, he’s hit the grand piano.”

Of course, there will be no announcers for this tournament, but there will be plenty of laughs as the Marriott Hotel-Warner Center kicks off an indoor golf tournament Aug. 14, with proceeds benefiting the Celebrity Outreach Program.

The 18-hole course begins with a par-4 that winds its way through the Parkside Restaurant and ends with another par-4 that snakes its way around the indoor pool. In between are some very challenging holes, such as No. 8, which will involve a long shot across the marble hallway and into the gift shop. Or the 11th hole, which involves hitting a tee shot into the elevator, taking it to the 14th floor and putting the ball down 14 floors of stairs.

Other holes will take golfers through the $1,500-a-day presidential suite and the nearby vice-presidential suite, where golfers will get the chance to speak Latin to a group of Latin Americans.

Celebrity Outreach Foundation had aided dozens of nonprofit organizations since its inception last year, including the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, the Greater Los Angeles Partnership for the Homeless, Planned Parenthood and the Starlight Foundation.

The tournament field will comprise four-person corporate teams. Entry fee is $100 per person. Prizes will include trips to Rio de Janeiro, San Francisco, San Diego, Lake Tahoe, Vancouver and Carmel.

Information: 818-887-4800.