Golf : Arizona State Next Stop for Junior Champion Brandie Burton

Brandie Burton won all there was to win in national junior girls’ golf this summer and very nearly did the same on the women’s tour. Now she is turning her attention to college golf.

The Rialto girl, the Junior World and United States Junior Girls’ champion, will enroll Monday at Arizona State but she won’t have to wait long before resuming her golfing career. The Sun Devils open the collegiate season Sept. 25 in the University of Oregon Invitational.

Burton, who won’t be 18 until January, also reached the finals of the U.S. Women’s Amateur and the Women’s Trans-National tournaments.

“She came about as close to a grand slam as she could get without getting it,” said her mother, Barbara. “Every year she seems to outdo herself.”

She certainly outdid not only herself but everyone else on the junior circuit when it came to driving the ball. In all of her matches Brandie, who stands 5-feet-7 and weighs 165 pounds, out-drove her opponents by at least 50 yards.

“When I really crank one, I hit it about 260 yards,” she said. “I used to take distance seriously, but now I’m more concerned with hitting it in the fairway than I am with how far it goes.”

Her strength, Burton believes, comes from her early training as a swimmer.

“I swam the breaststroke for seven years, from the time I was 4 until I was 11, and that really built up my legs and shoulders, and that’s what you need to hit the ball a long way,” she said.

An all-around athlete, Burton was a Junior Olympian in swimming, an all-star catcher in softball and turned down an opportunity to train for a career in tennis to concentrate on golf.

“She was a natural in every sport she tried,” her mother says. “She loved every one of them and the best thing about it is that she got good grades, too.”

Burton graduated from Eisenhower High with a 3.6 grade-point average.

She started her final season of junior golf by winning a third Optimist Junior World title by seven strokes over Nicole Horner of Hawaii with a near-record 291 over the 6,272-yard north course at Torrey Pines. She won the 13-14 age division in 1986 and the 15-17 in 1987.

“It’s nice to go out on top,” Brandie said after repeating as champion.

Next was the U.S. Junior, where she became the first girl to win the medal three years in a row. Her 69-69--138 at the Pine Needles course in Southern Pines, N.C., broke the tournament record by two strokes.

Although she defeated Camie Hoshino of Hawaii, 1 up, in the final, Burton scored her big win in the semifinals when she defeated her longtime rival, Vickie Goetze of Hull, Ga., 1 up. The pair first met in the 1986 U.S. Junior, where Goetze won in a third-round match.

Their match was so tense this year that Burton was three under par after five holes--and was one down before asserting herself on the back nine.

“I really wanted that title so my name would be on the trophy with some of the players who had great careers later,” Burton said, referring to champions such as Marlene Bauer Hagge, Mickey Wright, JoAnne Gunderson Carner, Hollis Stacy, Amy Alcott and Nancy Lopez.

Dick Taylor, editor of Golf World magazine, called Burton “a combination of Gunderson and Lopez” after watching her in the tournament.

Goetze got her revenge eight days later, however, when she turned the tables on Burton in the Amateur final at Pinehurst, N.C., winning, 4 and 3.

The loss prevented Burton from becoming the first female to win the U.S. Junior and U.S. Amateur championships in the same year. Gunderson is the only one to have won them both and she accomplished it over two years. As did Burton, Gunderson also lost in the amateur final the year she won the junior title.

Then came the Trans-Nationals in Columbia, S.C., where Burton dominated play before losing to Karen Noble of Brookside, N.J., in the final, 5 and 3.

“I think it was a pretty good month altogether,” Brandie said.

At Arizona State, she will move into the spot left by Pearl Sinn, who turned professional after four years of college. Sinn, who lives in Bellflower, won both the U.S. Amateur and the U.S. Women’s Public Links championships last year and repeated this year in the Public Links.

“I chose Arizona State because it’s a fabulous facility, it has a great tradition of golf and the team has a great coach in Linda Vollstedt,” Burton said.

Until now, her instructors have been her father, Roger, a Sunday golfer; Tim Miskell, professional at the Arrowhead Country Club in San Bernardino; and Cheryl Thomas, pro at the San Bernardino municipal course.

She started playing while tagging along with her brother, Troy, when she was 8. Troy, 24, is an assistant pro at Arrowhead.

She was hitting balls at Walt Duda’s driving range in Redlands when she caught the attention of Katie Castator, former golf writer for the San Bernardino Sun. When the Southern California Golf Assn. held a junior clinic at Fairmount Park in Riverside, Castator suggested that Burton, then 13, demonstrate how to hit the driver.

“That was the first time I ever saw her and I was amazed,” Miskell said. “It was obvious that she was oozing with talent. She was hitting it well over 200 yards, remarkable for a little girl. I told her that if she needed any help, to call on me.”

Golf Notes

Finding it more and more difficult to get a starting time? The National Golf Foundation reports that the nation’s golf population increased by 7.8%--from 21.7 to 23.4 million--last year. The figures indicate that women are the biggest contributors to the increase. They make up about 22% of the golfers in the United States, yet 41% of all new golfers are women. . . . Women professionals of the LPGA will show their talents Sept. 21-24 at Los Coyotes CC in the $300,000 Nippon Travel-MBC (for Mainichi Broadcasting Systems) tournament. Openings are available for a women-only pro-am Sept. 18, and a celebrity pro-am Sept. 20. The charity events will help fund the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and Childhelp U.S.A. Among the favorites will be Amy Alcott, who won a Lee Hamill Memorial junior tournament on the same course when she was 13. That was 20 years ago.

Two old favorites, Riviera and Los Angeles North, are included in Golf magazine’s choice of the 100 best courses in the world. Riviera is ranked No. 30 and L.A. North No. 35. In for the first time are two PGA West courses in La Quinta, the original Stadium monster, ranked No. 77, and the Jack Nicklaus private course, No. 90. As usual, two of the top four are the Monterey peninsula neighbors, Pebble Beach and Cypress Point. Pine Valley, N.J., is ranked No. 1. . . . The California Handicapped Skiers Foundation will be recipients of proceeds from the Arcadia Tournament of Roses celebrity tournament Monday at Santa Anita. Participants include Adrian Zmed, Jason Bateman, David Graf, Ellie Daniel and Judy Norton-Taylor. . . . Stan Funk defeated Dick Park, 1-up, for the championship of the Penmar men’s club. . . . Leanne Ulmer of Shandin Hills shot 233 in winning the Southern California women’s public links’ 54-hole tournament at Rio Hondo. Dona Kogan of Knollwood finished second at 247. . . . Southland sectional qualifying for the U.S. Senior Amateur will be held Thursday at Horse Thief.