Turner Finding No Handicap in Limited Practice : Golf: Van Nuys resident forgoes extensive preparation, but that didn’t keep him from second L.A. City Amateur title.

According to one school of thought, it doesn’t take much effort to play even-par golf. All one has to do is play golf or hit practice balls seven or eight hours a day, seven days a week, sometimes at night, until the bones in one’s hands begin to show through the skin, and then spend the rest of the time putting and analyzing videotape of one’s swing.

All of which leaves precious little time for other things, such as living. Most PGA stars make that little sacrifice, however, and have turned themselves into well-oiled, shot-producing machines capable of amazing golf shots and not too much of anything else.

Amateur golfers, however, don’t have the luxury of being able to pound golf balls until the shafts of their drivers begin to overheat. They have to work their golf in around a few other things, such as making a living and spending time with their families.

But often, despite those great obstacles, amateur golfers succeed in honing their game to a great sharpness.

Mike Turner is one who has done it. The furniture pillow manufacturer from Van Nuys has brought his game to a high level despite playing and practicing only around the schedule mandated by his job and the needs of his wife and young son.

Turner, 33, won the Los Angeles City Amateur championship in 1987, and won it again last weekend. All of which makes one wonder what he’d be capable of if he ever got serious about the game.

“I leave for work at 7 or 8 a.m. and get out at 5 p.m. or so,” he said. “When I’m preparing for a tournament, I stop on the way home from work and hit balls at a range and one day during the week, I play a round of golf, starting at 5 a.m.”

Owning his business--with his father--provides Turner the sole benefit to his game.

One day a week he can arrive at the Paltex Inc. offices in Los Angeles at 11 a.m. without losing his job.

When he’s not in a two- or three-week preparation program for a tournament, his golf falls to just a round a week at the Woodland Hills Country Club, with no time for hitting practice balls. And by the time September rolls around, golf falls yet another notch.

“In September, I’ve really gotten burned out on golf and I put the clubs away,” Turner said. “I play once in a while, maybe once a month or so, but until January, I never practice, never hit balls. Those are the months that I spend all of my time with my wife and son. I give them all of my time for the fall and winter.”

But yet, even with his clubs collecting dust, Turner will see his handicap fall only from scratch to a three by the time spring comes.

And that goes a long way toward disproving the theory that golf is all practice. According to common belief, the more one practices, the better one gets. But that does not explain why so many 60-year-olds who have played golf two or three times a week for 40 years must yell “Fore!” while they’re still in their backswings.

“Golf requires talent,” Turner said. “No question about it. Some people do some things better than other people. The best golfers in the world didn’t get that way just because they hit range balls all day.”

Turner, the only left-hander ever to win the Los Angeles City Amateur in its 70-year history, was always a better-than-average golfer. At Cal State Northridge, he was one of the school’s top two golfers for three years. But it wasn’t until a few years after he left school that his game began showing great improvement.

Turner credits the improvement not to hours and hours of hand-blistering practice, but rather to a cerebral approach to practice and competition.

“I watch guys all the time at the range hitting ball after ball, all day long,” Turner said. “But they’re not getting any better because they don’t know what they are practicing. They spend three hours hitting balls and all it did was reinforce a bad swing habit.

“I learned that with limited time, practicing the right way is the key. Everyone hits a certain percentage of their shots well, at any level. The more you practice the things that created those good swings, the higher the percentage of good swings you will make.”

Even though a high percentage of Turner’s swings are good ones, he has never given much thought to the idea of turning professional.

“At the time I had that decision to make, when I got out of college, I just wasn’t good enough to really consider it,” he said. “I just did not dominate my peers in golf. To realistically consider a life on the PGA Tour, you have to dominate the people you play against. I didn’t do that.

“I am very content to be the best amateur golfer I can be.”

For Turner--and he makes this point emphatically--that requires a wife who does not regularly throw steak knives past his head whenever he mentions that he might be playing golf in the morning or might be a bit late for dinner because he’ll be at the practice range after work.

“Lorrie is great about it,” Turner said. “She knows how much it means to me. I’m lucky. She and our son, Sean, put up with me and my golf. My wife doesn’t really play the game, but she gives me great support anyway.”

And sometimes, the support of a family can make a difference, even in golf.

“In the last round of the L. A. Amateur, I had about a 20-foot putt near the end,” Turner said. “Lorrie and Sean were following me in a golf cart, and just as I got near the green, Sean fell out of the cart. My wife and I were pretty nervous and shaken up, but I had to keep playing. And I stood over that 20-foot putt and smashed it 10 feet past the cup. I was just worrying about my son, and I forgot about golf.

“Then I walked over to them and saw that he was OK. And I came back to the green and made the 10-footer and hung on to win the tournament. Winning it was nice, but having my family there to watch it made it really special.”