GOLF : Lamb Corraled by a Stickler for the Rules

For two weeks after his loss in the California Amateur golf championship, he kept quiet. He didn’t complain. Didn’t make excuses.

He hardly ever talked about the way in which he was ousted from the tournament, muscled out actually, by a win-at-all-costs rival who was better with the golf rule book than with a golf club.

Finally, however, Brian has broken the silence of the Lamb.

Brian Lamb, 20, of Newbury Park, cruised through the preliminary rounds of the state amateur tournament on the Monterey Peninsula. He finished third among a field of 102 golfers in 36 holes of stroke play. He then was pitted against John Zetterquist, 32, of Aptos, Calif., a pit bull of a golfer who never met a rule he didn’t like.

Lamb lost to Zetterquist on the first hole of a playoff after the two finished the regulation 18-hole, match-play round even. Lamb, however, lost two holes--either of which would have given him the victory--when Zetterquist contended that Lamb had violated rules.

The first controversial ruling came on the 14th hole when Lamb chipped in for a birdie from 30 feet, out of a bad lie in heavy grass and onto a green that sloped sharply away from him. His celebration was, however, quickly interrupted by Zetterquist, who loudly proclaimed that Lamb had played out of turn. Lamb was closer to the pin, Zetterquist claimed, and therefore Zetterquist should have hit first.

The marshal accompanying the twosome agreed, even though he had stood beside Lamb as he hit the beautiful chip and made no effort to stop Lamb or warn him that he was playing out of turn. But the real bite is that Zetterquist also had stood and watched, allowing Lamb to make his shot knowing that if it was a good one, he would force Lamb to play it over again.

“That’s what really bothered me, is that he stood and watched me hit,” Lamb said. “And as soon as it went in he comes running over and says, ‘Brian, what are you doing?’ I asked him what he was talking about. He said, ‘This just isn’t right. It was my turn to hit.’

“I couldn’t believe it. The marshal made me hit the shot over again, even though he was standing next to me and allowed me to hit the first one. I didn’t get it close the second time and I lost the hole.”

Immediately after the players finished the 14th hole, Lamb decided that Zetterquist was not getting a Christmas gift from him this year.

“I told him I had never seen such a thing, that where I play golf people just don’t act like that,” Lamb said. “He told me I should try to look at what happened from his point of view. I laughed. I told him I couldn’t, that I wasn’t capable of looking at anything from the same point of view he had.

“What a guy.”

Then, on the 17th hole, what was seemingly a loss of perspective reared its ugly head again. Lamb hit into a sand trap, a 30-yard-long trap alongside the green. He walked into the trap to look at his ball, and, on his way back out, stopped and raked his footprints some 50 feet from his ball.

“I knew I had to rake the trap and I just thought I’d get that part of it, my footprints at the end of the trap, out of the way,” Lamb said.

Touching the sand with anything other than your feet is, however, a rules violation. Lamb knew it but wasn’t thinking about the rule. Zetterquist knew the rule too. And he did the only reasonable thing. He once again waited until Lamb hit his shot--making sure he didn’t blast the ball over the green and into the Pacific Ocean--and then he chirped again, telling the marshal that Lamb had raked the trap before he hit.

“The marshal didn’t even see it, so it would have come down to my word against Zetterquist’s,” Lamb said. “But I play fair. I’m honest. I told the marshal that I had raked the trap.”

And he lost the hole on a disqualification.

“That was it,” Lamb said. “There were no more words between us. I didn’t say another thing to the guy.”

Lamb tied the match on 18 when Zetterquist, obviously busy celebrating his most recent poke in the eye, took a whopping 10 on the hole. But on the first playoff hole Lamb missed a 10-foot putt for par and Zetterquist made a short par putt to win the match.

“The only thing that made me feel better was that he got beat in his next match,” Lamb said. “I had never run into anything like this guy. As soon as he lost, I felt better.”

Lamb, who played golf at Newbury Park High and for one season at Moorpark College, will attend Cal State Northridge in the fall and play on the Matador team. Later this month, he will tee it up in the Southern California Golf Assn. amateur championship at Bel-Air Country Club.

The best news? Zetterquist lives in Northern California.

“I’ll have to remind myself that if I’m ever up that way, to look him up,” Lamb said, laughing. “Maybe we could go to lunch.”

Four!: Cary Schuman of Calabasas, holder of the Guinness Book of World Records mark for the longest drive at sea level, a 411-yard bomb in 1989, is still at it. Last week he and three long-driving friends attacked the Copper Creek Golf Course in Copper Creek, Colo., with records in mind.

On the par-4, 420-yard 16th hole at Copper Creek, a course nestled at 11,000 feet in the Rockies, Schuman and fellow Californians Jerry James, Frank Miller and Mark Wawsczyk put their tee shots onto the green.

It is believed to be the first time that each member of a foursome has driven more than 400 yards. The record is being considered by the Guinness publishers.

Oh, and in case you figure these guys probably have the same light touch around the greens that they exhibit off the tee, Schuman set a course record that day with a round of 66.

But no cigar: Dale Henderson of Granada Hills finished with rounds of 78 and 70 and took fifth place in the Los Angeles City men’s championships at Griffith Park. The first two rounds of the 72-hole tournament were played June 29-30 and the final two were played last Saturday and Sunday.

Henderson’s total of 296 left him five shots behind Mark Corley of Los Angeles and Travis Williams of San Diego after regulation play. Corley won the tournament on the seventh playoff hole.

Finishing a stroke behind Henderson was Tony Bordwell of Granada Hills, Wayne Merich of Sepulveda and Mike Turner of Woodland Hills. Turner, with his victory in 1987, is the only left-hander to win the tournament.