They Will Scramble for Fun and Money : Golf: Pros say they look forward to the three-day format in the Shark Shootout.

While pro golfers must learn how to hit a ball out of horrible places and from horrible lies, the average weekend hacker seldom faces such problems. The duffer has a solution to a ball behind a tree or embedded in a fairway divot: the foot wedge.

The pros, however, don’t have the luxury of improving their position--they must play the ball as it lies. Except for this Sunday at the Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks in the final round of Greg Norman’s Shark Shootout Benefiting Ronald McDonald Children’s Charities. On that day, some of the best golfers in the world and several of the game’s legends will play in a scramble format.

And the scramble, in which each player on two-man teams hits a drive but both players then hit from the better of the resulting two locations, is about as much fun as a person can have on the course. If one ball is behind a tree, they merely play the other one.

“The format is what makes this tournament so much fun,” said Arnold Palmer, who will team with Peter Jacobsen in the three-day event that begins today with a best-ball format and continues with a round of alternate-shot play Saturday.

“We so seldom get to play a scramble,” Palmer said. “The scramble is just a riot. It’s so unique for us. You guys (amateurs) don’t think much about picking up your golf ball and putting it where you want it on the course, in a nice, convenient place. But for us, it’s a bit unusual.”

In addition to Norman, Palmer and Jacobsen, the field, which has seven members of the winning U.S. Ryder Cup team, features Jack Nicklaus, who designed the course; three-time U.S. Open champion Hale Irwin, Chi Chi Rodriguez, Curtis Strange, Chip Beck, Ben Crenshaw, Steve Pate, Raymond Floyd, Fred Couples, Steve Elkington, Mark O’Meara, Davis Love III, Lanny Wadkins, Tom Purtzer, Bruce Lietzke, Billy Andrade and Tom Kite.

The tournament, which has a $1-million purse, offers $250,000 to the winning team.

“This was just an idea of mine a few years ago, and I honestly never imagined it could become this big and this successful,” Norman said. “And the players just love it. Not many have turned down an invitation to play.”

The Sherwood course, 7,025 yards from the championship tees, was completed in in 1989. Nicklaus, who will play all three rounds of the tournament with Norman, said the layout was designed with the members in mind.

“I thought it was important to build a course that was playable for the average member,” he said. “And I’m happy that we have a course that is on that narrow line of being playable by the members but still severe enough to allow a championship tournament to be played on it.”

Nicklaus said he hasn’t played a competitive round of golf in two months and spent the early part of this week searching for his swing. “I’m not sure which end of the club to hold,” he joked, “but I figure by Friday I’ll know.”