GOLF / DAN HAFNER : Club Pro Making a Name for Himself on Senior Tour

Now that the Senior PGA Tour has blossomed, players in their 40s, struggling to make cuts on the regular tour, can’t wait to turn 50.

It has been the perfect vehicle for Arnold Palmer, Lee Trevino, Chi Chi Rodriguez, Don January, Gary Player and Mike Hill.

It also has benefited the Walter Mittys, players unsuccessful on the regular tour and some who never played it, such as Charles Owens, who overcame a fused left knee; Walter Zembriskie, who had been a steelworker; John Paul Cain, a top amateur who quit a lucrative job as a stockbroker, and Rocky Thompson, who had entered more that 600 tournaments at all levels and never won until a senior event last June in Syracuse.

Now comes cigar-chomping Larry Laoretti, a longtime club professional who has become popular with senior tour galleries. While puffing away, Laoretti plays with the abandon of a riverboat gambler. He also hits the ball a mile.

Laoretti thrust himself into the limelight in late June when he finished second three times over six tournaments. All were on ESPN, and viewers marveled at the way he hit the ball while puffing on his cigar.

Laoretti, who never played on the regular PGA tour, had been a club pro for 30 years when he finished second in the senior qualifying school in 1990. He has not won a tournament, but he earned $165,000 as a rookie last year and has earned more than $250,000 this season.

Local fans will get a chance to see him at Rancho Park in the Security Pacific Senior tournament Oct. 21-27.

“I’ll be there,” Laoretti said. “I play every week. I’d be playing golf all the time, anyhow, so I might as well be getting paid for it.

“After all these years of struggling to make a living, it’s like dying and going to heaven. I can’t believe it.”

Laoretti, his wife Susan and their son Lonnie Phillip, who will be 2 just before the tournament at Rancho Park, travel to tournaments by motorhome. Sometimes Susan caddies, but as her son gets older she spends more time watching.

Laoretti admits he had only a couple of hundred dollars when he played in his first tournament in 1990 at Key Biscayne, Fla. He tied for 40th and picked up $2,000. The next week at Tampa in the GTE Suncoast, he finished tied for sixth.

“That check for $15,000 was the most money I had ever seen,” Laoretti said. “I knew I must be dreaming.”

Despite finishing 32nd on the money list, he traveled in obscurity until the tournament at Charlotte, N.C., the last weekend in June of this year.

He battled Jim Colbert to the wire, losing by three shots. The next week at the Jack Nicklaus Sports Center in Ohio, Laoretti was in contention all the way. He shot a last-round 67, but lost by a stroke to Al Geiberger.

The first weekend of August on Long Island, where he was a teaching pro for many years, Laoretti battled George Archer. They were tied after 36 holes, but Archer shot a 69 on the final round to beat Laoretti by two strokes.

“I came close three times--but no cigar,” he laughed. “I was hitting the ball good and putting well in all of those. But I’ll tell you. When the going got tough I was really chomping on those cigars.

“It would be nice to win a tournament, but I’m really having a good time. Imagine playing with people like Arnie Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Lee Trevino. Trevino even gave me some pointers on getting out of sand traps.”

Although he never played on the PGA tour, Laoretti did play in some events. For a time in the early ‘60s he was a “rabbit,” a participant in Monday qualifying for a few available spots.

“I qualified for a couple of tournaments,” Laoretti said. “I even played in a PGA and a U.S. Open. But a club pro doesn’t have much spare time.

“Instead of playing, he’s teaching, selling equipment and answering complaints. It’s a fulltime job.”

Like so many others nearing 50, Laoretti wondered in the mid ‘80s if he could cut it. He took a club job in Florida to get more time to work on his game.

“I won a few tournaments and thought I would give it a shot,” he said. “I quit my job in 1989 and worked on my game.

“My friends laughed at me. But, I had made up my mind I would give it a try.”

Laoretti finished 15th in the regional qualifying school in the fall of 1989, barely making it to the final qualifying tournament. He was better in the final, finishing second to win one of five spots on the tour.

“Each week I think this is the week I might win,” he said. “Now, wouldn’t that be something?”

Golf Notes

The increase of marshals to enforce “go golf” at the city’s Wilson course in Griffith Park has reduced the average round from 5 1/2 hours to 4 hours 15 minutes. Here’s how it works: Before teeing off, golfers are told they have to play fast enough so there will never be more than one open hole ahead of them. The objective is to have a group on the tee and on the green simultaneously, and to play the entire round in less than 4 1/2 hours. If golfers do not think they can abide by the agreement, they are asked to play Harding, the adjacent course to Wilson, or to go elsewhere. . . . Chip Beck, Fred Couples, Raymond Floyd, Hale Irwin, Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer are some of the 20 players scheduled to compete in Greg Norman’s Shark Shootout at Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks Nov. 19-24.

The 15th Annual Arnold Palmer Golf Exhibition and Clinic, a benefit for Methodist Hospital of Southern California, will be held Oct. 21 at Annandale Golf Club in Pasadena. Events begin at 10:30 a.m. . . . The Los Angeles team of Adlinx, made up of golfers who are involved in advertising, beat 16 advertising teams from other cities to win the National Advertising Golf Assn. tournament held at The Ocean Course on Kiawah Island, S.C. . . . The Women’s Southern California Golf Assn. will hold its Tournament of Champions Nov. 14 at Redlands Country Club. . . . The Tom Hollenstein Golf Open will be held today at the Woodland Hills Country Club. Proceeds will benefit The Paralysis Project.