With Golf, Waiting Is Hardest Part

It seems as if every time your foursome has to wait to hit because of gridlock on the fairway, someone tells a story about golf in Japan.

One that made the rounds on the PGA Tour recently is about a teaching pro who was visiting Japan and saw a golfer at a driving range, slamming arrow-straight drives with a swing so smooth it looked like a scene from a golf instruction video.

The pro asks the man what he shoots.

“Where?” the Japanese golfer asks.

“You know, on the course,” the pro says.

“I don’t know,” the man with the great swing responds. “I’ve never played a round on a course.”

And, just like that, that five-hour Saturday round on your favorite Orange County course doesn’t seem so bad. And if you are one of those who gets up before 5 a.m. to wait in line outside the pro shop to ensure a decent starting time, you can pass the predawn hours by going over these tidbits about golf in Japan:

--Golfers have to wait months, sometimes as a much as a year, to get a tee time. (So maybe lying in bed and punching the redial button on your phone 50 times at 6 a.m doesn’t seem so bad?)

--Then, it will cost at least $150 for a round, even on the shaggiest of municipal courses. Some public courses get as much as $400 per round and more. (Now that $55 weekday price at Tustin Ranch doesn’t seem so outrageous, does it?)

--And the Japanese have to make reservations at most of their double- and triple-deck driving ranges, just for the chance to hit off a mat into a net that is often only 40 yards from the tee. (Gee, maybe you’d never even know you had that ugly slice.)

Still, all these stories don’t make every golfer glad he’s taking his swings in Orange County. County courses are more crowded every year. Greens fees continue to escalate.

Talk about future shock. Can we be far behind Japan? Will guys in Florida soon be sitting in the clubhouse telling horror stories about golf in Orange County?

Ranges from Buena Park to San Clemente are reporting that county golfers are practicing more. People are spending more time working on their games off the course because there are too few slots open to play practice rounds.

“Playing is still what it’s all about in the end,” said John Scappatura, general manager of the new El Toro Community Golf Center, a state-of-the-art practice facility. “That’s why we also built a (nine-hole) golf course here as well.

“I think more people really want to practice for that $75 round they’ll play on vacation. They want to be ready to play when they get there.”

The El Toro center, which includes a two-tiered driving range, greens and sand traps for practicing chipping and sand saves, a huge putting green and a short nine-hole course, is owned and operated by American Golf Corp. The firm touts the center as the most advanced practice facility in the United States.

Driving ranges have been around almost as long as the game of golf, but the idea of a full-purpose practice center is fairly new. American Golf Corp. has been building them for more than five years, but the the first ones in the United States were designed by Jack Nicklaus in the early ‘80s.

American Golf also has improved the practice areas at Rancho San Joaquin Golf Course in Irvine and David L. Baker Memorial Golf Course in Fountain Valley, but El Toro is definitely at the head of the class.

The driving range isn’t your typical vast area of nothingness with a few flagsticks pointing up like weeds the mower missed. There are two target greens, which have color-coordinated flags that provide golfers with exact distances to the pin.

The target greens are made of an artificial turf that holds a shot just about as well as an average green that has been dried out by the afternoon wind. There are also bunkers on the sides to give the feel of hitting down a fairway.

Every third hitting mat has a laser-measured yardage guide for both greens. It might be 112 yards to the red flag from one mat, but two mats down it’s 114. A PGA caddie couldn’t give you more precise distances.

Speaking of mats, normally that word is bad news for a golfer. For some, it means you’re almost as likely to bend a club on the worn, hard-rubber surface as make solid contact with the ball.

But at El Toro, the mats are made of the latest in pliable substances and even give a little when the ball is hit. The balls are also new, high-quality range balls, a far cry from the duds you’ll find on some ranges. The balls will be rotated so golfers are not faced with hitting cut and out-of-round balls that seem like mush on contact.

And players more sensitive to hitting surfaces while practicing can hit off top quality grass at El Toro. But not without a price.

In fact, everything at the El Toro center might be considered expensive by some.

A medium bucket of balls costs $5.25 and to hit the same bucket off the top-quality grass, it’s $7.75. In contrast, a medium bucket at Big Tee Golf Center in Buena Park is $3.75.

“We tried to upscale the driving range facility,” Scappatura said. “It takes the monotony out of practice. It’s a little bit higher price than most people are asking, but you have to think about what we are giving them.

“Do you want to spend $4 for a medium bucket and hit them out into nothing or do you want to spend $5.25 and hit them to neat target areas and have better quality balls? It’s the quality that keeps them coming back.”

El Toro also offers golfers a chance to shave strokes by concentrating on their short game. Five greens with sand traps next to them are for rent. For $7 an hour, you get the green, a trap and a bit of rough all to yourself.

El Toro also has a large putting green that has a somewhat odd rule--no spikes allowed. The rule started when the green was new and couldn’t survive the abuse, but as the grass has matured, it has been maintained to keep the quality at a high level.

The facility also features a nine-hole, executive-style course--there are seven par threes and two par fours, with distances ranging from 85 to 285 yards--that also features near PGA-quality greens.

“It’s a nice place to practice, to come out and putt and chip,” said Bill Cunerty, Saddleback College’s golf coach. “Those practice areas are sculptured. It’s the place to go if you want to spend some money on some serious practice.”

The El Toro center also offers another answer to overcrowding.

Lights flood the course and range, which stay open until well after 9 p.m. The Baker course, Newport Golf Course and Big Tee also offer county golfers the chance to play at night.

Golf in the dark doesn’t attract sunshine-hour type crowds, and few would compare it to playing in daylight. But for those stuck in the office late, it’s at least a chance to get in a swing or two before bedtime.

“I don’t prefer it,” said Irvine resident Alan Wilts, who was playing at Newport Beach Golf Course recently. “But with my work schedule and the courses being so crowded on weekends, this is usually the best that I can do, and it’s better than not playing at all.”

It’s easy to lose the flight of the ball in the lights and most courses concentrate the light on the tees, greens and other typical landing areas. Of course, golfers don’t always hit the ball where they want to, so visibility can be a major distraction.

Lights were considered for the 17th and 18th holes at the H.G. Dad Miller Golf Course in Anaheim so more players could finish their rounds after dusk. But the idea was scrapped when course officials figured the grass needed the rest more than a few more golfers needed to complete a round.

The Newport Beach course, close enough to the coast to deal with the marine layer on a regular basis, can get interesting when the fog settles in at night. Once the ball leaves the tee, you can only hope that it landed on, or very near, the green so it can be found again.

The age of computer technology has arrived in full bloom at Anaheim’s two municipal courses, Dad Miller and Anaheim Hills. To make the tee-time system as fair as possible, not to mention stopping golfers from sleeping in their cars overnight on the street in front of the course, a computerized phone reservation system has been installed.

Players register at the pro shop or send in a card with their Social Security number to be entered in a central computer system. The number becomes the player’s identification number.

Tee times are then reserved by calling the computer and punching in the identification number on your touch-tone phone. Available times are then announced by a computer voice and the caller selects the one he or she wants.

Times can be made a week and two hours in advance. So if you want a time for a Thursday, you start calling at 10 p.m. Wednesday the week before.

For the more competitive weekend times, all the members of a foursome can try to get through to reserve a time, all using the same identification number. That way, once one gets through and gets a time, the computer will then refuse the number and the other members of the group know they have gotten a time.

One of the biggest advantages is the reduced stress for starters. They don’t have to spend the day on the phone telling people “Sorry, no times left,” all day.

“People are finally getting the system figured out,” said Bob Johns, PGA professional at Dad Miller. “And this is honestly the very best, fairest way in the world to do this.”

So golf in Orange County is coming to this: dialing for tee times and then maybe settling for hitting a hundred sand shots to your own private practice green.

But for the frustrated county golfer, there is another course available. The cry is, “Go east, young golfer.” Riverside and San Bernardino counties have a host of public courses with available tee times.

All you have to do is get up early to beat the morning traffic. OK, and maybe you’ll have to skip the beer at the 19th hole to beat the rush-hour traffic home.

But, heck, in Japan . . .