GOLF / RICH TOSCHES : Leonards Keep El Caballero Championships All in the Family

From the I Said I Do, Now Hand Me the Wedge file we bring you Jeff Leonard and his wife, Risa, of Encino, who returned from their honeymoon in Hawaii just in time for Jeff to regain his El Caballero Country Club golf championship.

Lucky Risa. She got to hoist the 25-pound bag of golf clubs and trudge along with Jeff for three hot and smoggy days as his caddy.

And she couldn’t have been happier.

“I volunteered to caddy,” said Risa, an assistant vice president and manager of branch operations for Bank of America. “The excitement was so great, and to be with him and be able to support him was a lot of fun. That was where I wanted to be.”

One hopes that the husband-wife partnership will be as successful as the golfer-caddy relationship. With Risa at his side, Jeff cruised to a four-stroke victory in the 54-hole club championship, winning for the fourth time in five years.

And, with the family luck apparently still flowing, Jeff’s father, David Leonard, captured the El Caballero Senior Men’s championship Sunday at the Tarzana course.

“Dad just played fantastic down the stretch,” Jeff said. “He walked away from the field on the back nine. Last year, I lost the club championship in a playoff, and dad won the senior men’s championship. This year, after I won, he knew the pressure was on. We really wanted to be co-champs at the club.”

Jeff also won the club title in 1986, 1987 and 1988.

“This was much more special, because Risa was there to enjoy it with me,” said Leonard, who married on June 30 and spent two weeks in Hawaii before beginning the three-day tournament July 27. “She was wonderful. She did a great job.”

Risa was enlisted again this month to lug Jeff’s clubs during a one-day, 36-hole U. S. Amateur qualifying tournament at Wood Ranch Golf Club.

Alas, she was allowed to drive the golf clubs around the Simi Valley course in a cart.

Perhaps that broke the spell. Jeff missed qualifying by three strokes.

Having married into a golfing family, Risa thought it wise to begin playing the game too. She shows some promise: In her first round, on a course in Hawaii, she shot a nothing-to-laugh-at 112. She has since improved with the guidance of her golf instructor, Jeff Leonard.

And she has learned the most basic fact of golf.

“It’s fun,” Risa said. “But golf sure is frustrating.”

Incoming: Cary Schuman of Reseda, who is in the Guinness World Book of Records for a drive of 415 yards on a flat golf hole at sea level, proved last weekend that it was no fluke. Participating in the district finals of the National Long Driving Championships on Saturday, Schuman easily defeated 19 competitors with a 385-yard bomb.

The district finals were held at the North Kern Country Club in Oildale, just north of Bakersfield.

Tough turf: Two of the most difficult golf courses in Southern California lie within 10 miles of each other in southern Ventura County, as the Jack Nicklaus-designed Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks has been assigned a slope rating of 146 by the Southern California Golf Assn. Outdoing it on this fling-your-club meter is the treacherous, wind-raked Wood Ranch, which has a slope rating of 151 and is tied for first on the SCGA slope rating list.

The rating at Sherwood was made from the gold tees, from which the course totals 7,025 yards.

Only the Tournament Players Course at PGA West in Palm Springs--which shares the top spot with Wood Ranch--and the Eisenhower Course at Industry Hills Golf Club, which has a rating of 149, are considered more difficult. Sherwood’s 146 rating gave it a tie with three other courses as the fourth most difficult layout in Southern California.

The slope rating system measures the difficulty of courses for an 18-handicap golfer--one who generally records 18-hole scores around 90. The ratings are based on a course’s yardage and 13 other factors, including greens, rough, fairways, water hazards, trees, sand traps and out-of-bounds areas.

Nationally, a 113 slope rating is assigned to courses considered to be of average difficulty.

Klein defeated: Emilee Klein of Studio City was ousted late Wednesday from the U.S. Golf Assn. Girls Championships in Brielle, N.J.

Klein was beaten in match play on the second hole of a playoff by Kacie Myers of Venice, Fla. Earlier in the day, in first-round match play, Klein had defeated Wendy Patterson of Atlanta, 5 and 3.

Klein, 17, had qualified for match play with stroke-play rounds of 75 and 82 over the Manasquan River Country Club course.

Pro-Am benefit: The fifth annual San Buenaventura Pro-Am Classic will be held Sept. 27-28 at the Buenaventura and Olivas Park golf courses in Ventura.

The tournament benefits the Ventura County Special Olympics.

The event is open to the first 64 foursomes to sign up, with the amateurs competing for $10,000 in merchandise and the professionals going after a purse of $20,000.

The tournament, sponsored by the Ventura Dept. of Parks and Recreation, will be a 36-hole event with a scramble format.

The entry fee is $150 for amateurs and $250 for professional golfers.

Information: 805-653-1925.