ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Golf Is Not the Only Game in Town : To enjoy the benefits of a golf course, you have to be a golfer. Joggers, equestrians and others deserve consideration too.

Four years ago, I made a pilgrimage to St. Andrews, Scotland, and played a round of golf on the famous Old Course. The green fee was 15 pounds, the equivalent at that time of about $22. About 25 cents a stroke.

I told my playing partner for the day, a professor of mathematics at the University of St. Andrews, that I was surprised not only by the reasonableness of the green fee, but also by the fact that it was so easy to get on the course in the first place (I had waited no more than 15 minutes). This was, after all, the Old Course, the first golf course, the sport’s Mecca, the home of Young Tom Morris and the British Open and the Royal and Ancient Golf Club. It is the Valhalla of the golf gods.

The professor looked amused. It would always be that way, he said, because according to the laws of the borough of St. Andrews, the Old Course is to remain strictly a public course, open to any and all, at affordable fees, in perpetuity.

I considered selling my return plane ticket and staying. For just a couple of bucks more than the green fee at my local municipal track, I could play the Old Course. Forever. And, with the exceptions of minor periodic adjustments for the cost of living, no one would ever zing me with aberrations like mandatory golf cart fees (the Old Course is doggedly unmechanized), increases to cover the cost of a course remodeling job (absolute sacrilege) or news that the Japanese had bought the place and had decided to make it private.

Would there were more courses like that at home in Orange County, where playing a simple round of golf is getting to be quite a chore. Yes, there are lots of public courses in the county, nearly 25 of them, but there also are more and more golfers--the former tennis-and-racquetball-playing professional set has discovered that you can actually transact business while putting.

The lower-priced courses are often hopelessly backed up--most of the starting times having been reserved a week in advance--and the newer ones are not much better and are expensive besides. (One of the newest, the Tustin Ranch Golf Club, levies a $60 weekend green fee. That includes a mandatory golf cart--an increasingly common custom intended to speed up play. The elegant Links at Monarch Beach offers the same weekend package for $75.)

The people who run the public courses will say the throngs of people paying to play or the high green fees are necessary to maintain the courses, that you either must cram the course with players all day long or limit the number of foursomes and simply charge more money. And they are probably right.

The reflexive solution would be to simply build a few more courses. Golfers are quick to point out the beauty, tranquillity and other environmental advantages of large tracts of open green space, and they will rhapsodize about facing new challenges on new links.

But a group of Huntington Beach residents has revealed one flaw in that scenario that bears some consideration: In order to enjoy the benefits of a golf course, you have to be a golfer.

The group, which calls itself Save Our Parks, began an initiative drive late last year in an attempt to, among other things, prevent the development of 105 acres of the city’s Central Park as an 18-hole golf course. They argued that the city’s residents should decide how the land should be used, and they pointed out that the acreage was already used by joggers, equestrians, bird watchers and high school cross-country runners.

Is a golf course a beneficial use of land? For the most part, yes. Properly designed, golf courses follow the natural contours of the landscape, and, when mature, tend to enhance its beauty rather than mar it, as some critics claim that they do.

Given a choice of a golf course or an industrial park for a piece of undeveloped land, most people would prefer greens to machines. Golf courses are, in fact, less like playing fields and more like huge gardens, and conscientious golfers, whether they are aware of it or not, are environmentalists.

They should not, however, be usurpers. Golf is a magnificent game, but it is not the only game. The same stretch of land--public land--that would make a perfect par-5 fairway might also be ideal for early morning runs or horseback riding or kite flying or picnics. Golfers should not, and would not want to be, cast in the role of the schoolyard bully who kicks the smaller fry off the field.

The people of St. Andrews--and the golfers of the world--know they will never lose their cherished Old Course to a shopping center. By the same token, public parkland should not be restricted to a single use without the consent of all whom that land is intended to benefit.

Such action is considerate and it is fair play--two things every true golfer holds inviolate.