She Couldn’t Understand the Fuss; Nobody Said <i> Not</i> to Get Golf Ball

When Cheryl Howard left home Sunday morning for the 45-mile drive to Riviera Country Club, the last thing she envisioned was becoming a controversial but humorous footnote to the Los Angeles Open.

Attending her first professional tournament, she and husband Richard took a spot on the grass behind the ninth green to watch each threesome play through.

When Michael Allen’s approach shot rolled over the green and died at her feet, she did what she thought she was supposed to do.

She picked the ball up and tried to hand it to a nearby marshal. Her husband’s poker face could not hide his humiliation.

“It was embarrassing,” Mrs. Howard, a student artist at Mount San Antonio College, said as she put her hand over her blushing face for the umpteenth time.

“My husband didn’t tell me not to touch the ball.”

After Allen and playing partners Hal Sutton and Hale Irwin reached the green, the latter two finished up while Allen was forced to wait until a tournament official could be summoned. Glenn Tait then watched as Allen took a drop.

“No matter where she goes, she always makes a splash,” said Richard Howard, a paperhanger from Walnut, Calif. “Allen was really nice about it. He even liked the lie (where his wife dropped the ball after the marshal refused to take it.)

“He said, ‘I hope I can keep it here.”’

When Allen, the leader after the first two rounds, made a scrambling par four on the hole, the loudest applause came from a relieved Cheryl Howard.

After Allen rolled in his short putt, he walked toward her and tossed her his ball amid a few good-natured cries from the gallery of “Throw her out of here!”

Said Mrs. Howard: “When he got to his ball, he said: ‘I suppose you want the ball after I sink it in.’ And I said, ‘Yup.’ I think he had second thoughts about it coming back.”

The last group of the day, Gil Morgan, Rocco Mediate and third-round leader Fred Couples, were stranded midway down the ninth fairway during the 15-minute delay. But they all parred the hole.