Roughing It No More : Sylmar’s Berganio Claims 2 Amateur Titles in the Summer After Ironing Out His Swing on Less-Than-Immaculate Public Golf Courses

If you’re a young Catholic boy, a priest can teach you a lot. He can show you the difference between right and wrong. If you opt to be an altar boy, he can teach you how to ring the bells during Mass.

David Berganio Jr. of Sylmar got lucky. The priest at his church taught him how to play golf.

Eight years later, there might not be a better amateur golfer in the country.

Already this summer Berganio has won the U.S. Public Links championship and earlier this month he added the prestigious Pacific Coast Amateur championship.

A solid showing in the U.S. Amateur championship, which will begin Aug. 20 on the outskirts of Chattanooga, Tenn., will lock up a berth on the coveted U.S. Walker Cup team for Berganio, who will begin his junior year at the University of Arizona later this month.

And the Public Links title also secured for Berganio a berth in perhaps the most storied golf tournament in history, the Masters. He will head to Augusta next spring.

Not bad for a guy who learned the game on the often-battered public courses of the Valley instead of at plush country clubs.

Father George Miller, then pastor of Guardian Angel Catholic Church in Pacoima, brought the 14-year-old Berganio to one such heavily played course in 1983 and let him use a set of dented clubs.

Berganio fell in love.

“From the first day, from the first time I swung a club, I just loved the game,” said Berganio, 22. “I loved the individual aspect of it, the fact that you didn’t need anyone to throw a football to you, that you didn’t need anyone to pitch a baseball to you. It was just me and my clubs and the ball.”

He played on the varsity team at Alemany High for four years, graduating in 1988. After two years at Mission College--he sat out his second year after playing as a freshman--he moved on to Arizona as a scholarship player, made the team as a sophomore (1990-91) and earned All-Pacific 10 Conference honors.

His outstanding play also garnered him a nomination for the NCAA coaches’ All-American team, one of just 15 collegiate players to get such a bid.

But then, in the NCAA championships, the wheels fell off. Considered one of the likely winners, Berganio stumbled to 96th place.

“In one week I played myself right off the first-team All-America team and right off the second-team All-America team,” Berganio said. “I got third team. Big deal.”

Berganio came home to regroup after the NCAA tournament. He didn’t touch a club for three days, perhaps, he said, the longest inactive stretch in years for the fanatical golfer.

“For three days I sat around and re-evaluated things,” he said. “Where I was, what I had done and what I wanted to do. I set some goals for myself during those three days. One of them was to qualify for the Masters, which meant I had to win the Public Links. And then I started practicing.”

Daily, hours at a crack, Berganio pounded golf balls at El Cariso Golf Course in Sylmar.

For two weeks, Berganio wore his hands raw, hammering out a rhythm with his clubs. A winning rhythm.

He won the Public Links title in Columbus, Ind., easily, grabbing medalist honors during the first two days and then plowing through three days of match play.

“Usually, I’m not a very good match-play player,” Berganio said. “I don’t make a lot of birdies, but I don’t make a lot of bogeys, either. But after the first two rounds of stroke play, I was playing so well, I just turned it loose.

“In match play, once I got ahead of the guy, I just wanted to pound his brains out.

“I’m driving the ball 30 or 40 yards past everybody, 300 yards or more off every tee with the driver, hitting it over the corners of trees, cutting all the doglegs, just hammering people, playing super aggressive golf. I set the pace. I made them play me instead of the golf course.”

Such rage is not easily extinguished. He turned what was supposed to be a tightly contested tournament, the 25th Pacific Coast Amateur, into a joke. He blasted the tough Forest Highlands Golf Club layout in Flagstaff, Ariz., with an opening-round 64, setting the course record.

From there he cruised, mashing the competition until he eased up a bit too much on the final day and allowed the field to draw within shouting distance. But by then, it was too late.

Berganio won the tournament by three strokes after leading by as many as nine.

“From the first round of the Public Links, I’ve just been playing unbelievable golf,” Berganio said.

“The 64 on the first day didn’t even surprise me. It could have been lower. I was in that same groove. . . . I had that same mental zone that I was in during the Public Links. I had eagle putts all week.

“But then in the last round, I lost it. I had a nine-stroke lead and just gave up. All the energy just left me. I was so pumped up with adrenaline for so long, I just couldn’t maintain it anymore. Instead of playing the same aggressive golf, I started playing conservative.”

He bogeyed one hole on the back nine the final day, and then double-bogeyed a hole later. The more conservative he became, the more his game came apart. “That A personality was gone,” he said. “I felt like I was just going through the motions. I also knew, however, that nobody could beat me.”

He said the Berganio who steps onto the course for the U.S. Amateur will be the same one who breathed fire for two weeks this summer. “I’ll get the attitude back, no question about it,” he said. “I’ll start practicing really hard later this week and by the time I get to Chattanooga, I’ll be pumped again.”

He will play golf again at the University of Arizona. He is majoring in sociology and said he will get his degree in May, 1993, before he makes any attempt to play professional golf.

But, he insists, the day will come when he will walk the PGA Tour.

“And not just to play on it,” he said. “When I get there, I plan on winning. There’s nothing like winning. That’s why I love this game so much. The winning. It’s all on your shoulders. No teammates, no coaches to hit the ball for you. It’s just you.”

Except, of course, at the beginning. Then it was Berganio and Miller.

“He changed everything for me,” Berganio said. “When he introduced me to golf, I gave up everything. I gave up Little League baseball and Pop Warner football. There was no question what I wanted to do.

“Pretty soon I started borrowing his clubs and playing golf by myself. I never went more than a few days without playing a round of golf.”

And he didn’t play anywhere but the blue-collar courses.

“I grew up on the public courses,” he said. “That was it for me. Looking back, I know that playing those courses made me a good golfer. Because if you can learn how to putt well through a green full of spike marks, learn how to power the ball to the hole over some really bad greens, then the good greens I play now are so easy to putt on.”

And these days, he sees mostly the perfectly manicured greens.

“It’s funny, but when I was 15, I never dreamed I’d be playing courses like Riviera and the Bel-Air Country Club and Sherwood, and not have to pay, either,” he said. “Things are different now. When you win, things change. People want to do things for you. From where I came from, believe me, I’m very, very thankful.”