GOLF / MAL FLORENCE : Hall of Fame Is a Victory Away for Alcott

It was 26 years ago that a freckle-faced youngster walked into Walter Keller’s golf shop in Westwood with her mother.

“I said, ‘Would you like to hit some balls?,’ ” Keller recalled.

The youngster obliged, and Keller was surprised.

He said to himself, “What is this?

“I was impressed with her physical ability and I told her mother, ‘You have a talented child.’ ”

The mother replied amiably, “I have a brat.”

That was the start of a long-lasting teacher-pupil relationship between Keller and the talented 9-year-old, Amy Alcott.

Alcott, 35, who won the recent Nabisco Dinah Shore tournament at Rancho Mirage by a runaway eight-stroke margin, is on the verge of becoming a member of the LPGA Hall of Fame.

She has 29 career victories and needs only one more to gain admittance.

That’s just a formality, according to Keller. “She’ll win 12 more, at least. I told her she’s got five to seven years left to be at the top, and that’s where she belongs.”

However, Alcott’s career was on hold until she won the Dinah Shore tournament. She hadn’t won an LPGA tour event since 1989, and was emotionally distressed by the death of her mother, Lea, last August.

“She was burned out and she didn’t want to practice,” Keller said. “I told her if she didn’t keep working, atrophy would set in, and that would apply to anyone in the athletic world.”

Alcott is back on track now and says she’s not pressing for her meaningful 30th victory.

Her Hall of Fame quest will resume May 3-5 in the Sara Lee tournament at Nashville, Tenn.

“It will happen, but I can’t go out and make it happen,” Alcott said. “I never tee it up trying to win. It’s a byproduct of having all the right things happen and a little bit of luck.”

Alcott said she has been told that she hits the ball like a man and she takes it as a compliment.

She also said she has always had a short backswing, counter to advice given in many golf magazines emphasizing a full turn.

“I was going against the book but going by the individual,” Keller said in regard to Alcott’s short backswing. “She’s broad-shouldered and, if she took the club back to the horizontal position, she’d lose control.

“When you go beyond the point of control, the legs balk on you and you get out of sync. The key for distance is the extension of the arms through the ball, not the length of the swing. And that’s what I told her.”

Alcott doesn’t work extensively with the 82-year-old Keller as she once did, but they have a father-daughter type relationship.

She plans to design a golf course in San Diego County next year, but her grand design is a career that is apparently headed for the Hall of Fame.

PGA Tour talk:

--Ben Crenshaw, on the final nine holes of the recent Masters tournament at Augusta National: “There are no nine holes like this nine. There never will be. It’s constant psychological warfare between you and the course.”

--Johnny Miller, talking about Greg Norman in Golf Digest: “I’m not the one to say it, but there are players who say he has the heart of a grape seed . . . that he doesn’t have a big enough heart. . . . Somehow he has never lived up to his potential. A lot like maybe Tom Weiskopf. Those two careers actually could be very parallel.”

--Tom Watson, on the use of the long-shafted putter: “I don’t think it’s a stroke of golf. I think it should be outlawed.”

--Rocco Mediate, who uses the long-handled putter: “I like it. It works well for me. I don’t care if anybody else doesn’t like it. He (Watson) has no control over the rules. When they say it’s illegal, it’s illegal.”

Golf Notes

Dr. Frank (Bud) Taylor, 74, a prominent amateur golfer who won the state championship in 1954 and 1955 and was runner-up in 1951 and 1956 to Ken Venturi, died March 30 in Victor, Mont. Taylor was also a member of three winning U.S. Walker Cup teams and played in four Masters tournaments. . . . The 20th annual Pride of the Foothills invitational golf tournament is scheduled May 3-5 at the Glendora Country Club. The field will consist of 102 teams representing clubs from several states. . . . The Beverly Hills Women’s Club will hold its first tournament of the year, the Vice President’s Cup, on April 29 at the Balboa course in Encino. . . . CBS television analyst Ken Venturi will be the tournament chairman for the inaugural Proto Beam Charity event on May 20 at the Morningside Country Club in Rancho Mirage. The tournament will benefit cancer research at the Loma Linda University Medical Center.

The Department of Recreation and Parks will hold its second educational program at 13 courses next Saturday and Sunday. . . . Free instruction will be available to junior players June 25-27 at Rancho Park.

Jack Lemmon’s invitational tournament will be held July 25-28 at Pebble Beach. “I’ve decided the only way that I can play the final round at Pebble Beach is to create my own tournament,” said the actor, who has yet to make the cut in the annual pro-am tournament.