GOLF / SHAV GLICK : Ruth McCullah Was Ahead of Her Time

Ruth McCullah died recently in Palm Desert. She was 78.

Not many are still around who remember the feisty little McCullah as one of the finest amateur golfers in Southern California.

She won 22 women’s club championships at Riviera, the State title in 1949 and 1953 and the Southern California Women’s tournament seven times between 1947 and 1956. In 1949, she scored a Women’s Golf Assn. triple crown, winning the State, Southern California and Midwinter.

Had she become a professional golfer, McCullah would certainly have been one of the best, but when she had her big year in 1949, the Ladies PGA had not yet been formed.

When she won her second State championship in 1953, McCullah was 41 and already a grandmother, and in the final at Annandale Golf Club, she defeated 18-year-old Arlene Brooks, who a year earlier had won the U.S. Junior Girls’ title.

The unusual part of McCullah’s career is that she did not start playing golf seriously until she was 29, after her husband had been killed in World War II.

“If I’d started when I was 20, I really believe I could have won a national championship,” she once said. “I didn’t know the game existed until 1941, and then I only started playing because a friend of mine was told by her doctor to exercise. So she took up golf, and I started tagging along.

“Pretty soon I was beating her, and I decided to take lessons from Joe Robinson at Brentwood. In six months time, I was shooting in the 70s. I had always been a good athlete. After I took up bowling, I rolled a 225 in about a month.”

Among the players she defeated regularly were future pros Beverly Hanson, Gloria Fecht, Alice Bauer and Barbara Romack, and amateur champions Clara Callender Sherman, Allene Gates Weissmueller and Loma Smith.

Maury DeMots, now a teaching professional at Riviera and a former partner of McCullah’s in team matches, remembers Ruth as the fastest player she ever saw.

“One thing you never wanted was to be playing ahead of Ruth,” DeMots said. “She thought nothing of yelling, ‘Fore, I’m coming through.’

“Once we were playing as a threesome and play was slow, and we caught up with a foursome and played a couple of holes as a sevensome. We caught two slow players in front of us, and Ruth said, ‘The rest of you get behind that tree and I’ll get on the tee, and when they see me, they’ll wave us through.’ Sure enough, they saw it was Ruth and waved her up. You should have seen their faces when we all paraded through, but no one messed around with Ruth, so they didn’t say anything.”

McCullah was 5-feet-2 and weighed no more than 115 pounds, but she often played from the men’s tees at Riviera and once shot a four-under-men’s-par 68.

Arnold Palmer will be in the neighborhood the next couple of weeks for a pair of events benefiting local hospitals--the Security Pacific Senior tournament at Rancho Park and his own 14th annual exhibition and clinic at the Annandale Golf Club in Pasadena.

The $500,000 senior tournament, for Centinela Hospital Medical Center’s Children’s Charity Fund, has a field that includes Lee Trevino and Chi Chi Rodriguez. It will be played next Monday through Nov. 4, with a two-day pro-am starting the event, followed by the 54-hole tournament.

On Nov. 5, Palmer will play 18 holes at Annandale with touring pros Mark O’Meara and Billy Ray Brown and host professional Pat Rielly, who is also president of the PGA.

“We are limiting the gallery to 3,000, so everyone will have a chance to mingle with the players,” said Walter Hoefflin, co-chairman and founder of the event. Tickets are $25, with proceeds going to the California Medical Center and the Methodist Hospital in Arcadia.

O’Meara is coming off a hot streak in which he won the Texas Open and finished high in the Las Vegas Invitational. He is 11th in PGA Tour earnings this year with $595,675.

“Golf is the most democratic game there is,” O’Meara said recently. “You start each week zero. You only get what you earn, and you can’t get caught up in the money. You just have to think about winning.”

Rielly, who has played in all of the Palmer exhibitions, said either O’Meara or Brown could break the course record of 64, set three weeks ago by Annandale assistant pro Jim Petralia, if “they putt out everything.”

Added Rielly: “The course is in such great condition that a low number is definitely a possibility, especially with those two guys.”

The match will pit Palmer and Brown against O’Meara and Rielly. Roger Barkley of KABC Radio will be master of ceremonies for the 10:30 a.m. clinic.

Golf Notes

Former USC star Bob Pastore of San Diego CC will try for his third Southern California Senior Amateur championship Thursday and Friday at Redlands CC. Pastore’s victory last year at Ojai Valley was helped by a hole in one. His challengers include Dan Murray, winner of the recent Pasadena Seniors championship and a 1989 quarterfinalist in the U.S. Senior Amateur, and George Lombino, the 1988 winner. . . . Mark O’Meara has joined the growing list of players who design courses. He will assist Rees Jones in building the south course of the Tournament Players Club in San Diego. Johnny Miller will design the north course.

Janine Rafferty of Hemet, a 32-handicapper at Quail Ranch CC in Moreno Valley, had two holes in one in the same round during a ladies club tournament. She aced the 111-yard No. 2 with a five-wood, then got another at the 97-yard No. 15 with a five-iron. . . . Kiku Kubo defeated defending champion Sharon Onak in sudden death to win the Crystalaire CC women’s championship. Karen Cherry-Adler finished third, taking only 26 putts in the final round. . . . Women of the SoCal Golf Assn. will hold their annual 36-hole tournament Monday and Tuesday at the Glendora and Victoria courses.

The Pepperdine Alumni Assn. will hold a fund-raising tournament next Monday at North Ranch CC in Westlake Village, with proceeds going to support university scholarships. Among the entries are pros Loren Roberts, Steve Pate and former long-driving champion Mike Gorton plus Pepperdine alumnus Mike Scott, a Cy Young Award-winning pitcher. . . . The SoCal Lefties will hold their 28th annual Fall tournament Nov. 3-4 on the Showboat Hotel and Painted Desert courses in Las Vegas. . . . Claude Akins will host a celebrity tournament Monday for the Needs of the Elderly at Porter Valley CC. Proceeds will go to the Valley Senior Service and Resource Center.

For the juniors: The Bill Bryant Memorial tournament will be held Tuesday at Industry Hills to raise funds for scholarships in Bryant’s name. This year’s recipients are Chris Tidland of Placentia (and Oklahoma State); Brian Baumgartner of Santa Ynez (Cal State Long Beach); John Gaynor of San Dimas (California), and Shannon Hare of Covina (Oregon). . . . Al Geiberger, Dave Stockton and administrators Lou Bastanchury and John W. Brown will be inducted into the SoCal PGA Junior Golf Hall of Fame at the SCPGA’s Banquet of Champions on Nov. 2 at the Alta Vista CC in Placentia.

Honors: Golf magazine’s list of America’s best golf resorts includes Pebble Beach in the gold medal class, and La Costa, La Quinta, Ojai Valley and Hyatt Grand Champions of Indian Wells as silver medalists. . . . Golf Digest selected the best 75 public courses--not including resorts--and the group includes Sandpiper GC in Goleta, Desert Dunes in Palm Springs, Moreno Valley Ranch in Moreno Valley and both the north and south Torrey Pines courses in La Jolla.