Booth Avoids the Traps

As the only girl on the Santa Margarita varsity golf team, Kellee Booth has learned at least one valuable lesson: Boys aren’t always gentlemen.

Her first clues came last year, early in her freshman season. There were times when Booth would express disappointment with her shots during practice rounds, but many of her teammates scoffed at her high expectations.

“They would say, ‘You’re a girl, what do you expect?’ ” Booth said. “That really ticked me off.”

But there never was a question of Booth folding under the pressure, though her own teammates often gave her a hard time. Not only did Booth retain her spot on the team, she finished the season solidly in the No. 3 position.

Now in her second season with the Eagles, Booth still faces the disadvantage of all girls who play high school golf in the state. Because there aren’t separate girls’ teams, they must play on school teams that have been predominantly made up of boys. That means they must play from the men’s tees, which makes the average course as much as 1,000 yards longer.

But Booth is undaunted. She doesn’t scare easily and, therefore, she thinks her presence gives Santa Margarita a competitive advantage.

“It’s intimidating to the guys on the other team,” Booth said. “They say, ‘It’s a girl, we can beat them.’ But when they see I am a pretty good player, they sometimes want to take it back.”

It’s the type of competitive attitude that makes a mother proud.

“I’m trying to instill a killer instinct in her,” Jane Bastanchury Booth said. “She’s very competitive and I was, too.”

In the late 1960s and early ‘70s, Bastanchury Booth was one of the top amateur golfers in the country. A two-time All-American at Arizona State, she was low amateur in the 1971 and 1972 U.S. Open Women’s Championships, finishing third overall in 1971. She considered joining the LPGA Tour but the opportunities weren’t as great then and she decided she preferred the part-time world of amateur golf.

Kellee was born in 1976 to Jane and her husband Mike, who carries a seven handicap at the Coto de Caza course, and was almost immediately immersed in the sport. Her mother put Kellee down on the putting green while she practiced and pushed her in a stroller around courses.

“We tried to indoctrinate her early,” Jane Booth said. “I don’t know if you want to call it pushing, but we wanted to get her going in the right direction as far as golf is concerned.”

By age 3 or 4, Booth had started hitting, and when she was 7, she played in her first competition, joining her father in a father-daughter tournament. With further guidance from her parents and the help of Tom Sargent, the head professional at Yorba Linda Country Club, Kellee continued to improve.

In the summer of 1990, Kellee made a breakthrough, winning the Rolex Tournament of Champions on the American Junior Golf Assn. tour. Since then, she has won two more AJGA events and the Orange Bowl tournament in December, despite playing in a division of players up to 18 years old. Booth is now ranked third in the nation among female junior golfers.

Playing for her high school team presents other challenges for Booth, who wants to play for a Division I college. Although her average drives travel about 230 yards, she still usually is playing about 15 yards behind her competition. But that has forced her to improve her short game.

Dave Duran, the Santa Margarita coach and the teaching professional at El Niguel Country Club, said her putting can be uncanny. He said her long-iron play is also very strong.

1992 Golf Preview

Top teams: Dana Hills, El Toro, Estancia, Huntington Beach, Irvine, Santa Margarita, Servite, Sunny Hills, Trabuco Hills.

Top players: Zachery Allen (Trabuco Hills), Chris Beck (Estancia), Chris Berry (Esperanza), Kellee Booth (Santa Margarita), Dan Buchner (Dana Hills), Eunice Choi (Laguna Hills), Mark Christensen (Trabuco Hills), Yong Chun (Loara), Trent Fenzl (Huntington Beach), Ben Garner (El Toro), Scott Gibson (Huntington Beach), Brian Hadley (University), Eric Hegarty (San Clemente), Jason Hewitt (Santa Margarita), Paul Hinkle (Estancia), Jacy Igarashi (Laguna Hills), Mike Kelce (Canyon), Cory Laughery (Loara), John Lee (Valencia), Graham Lynch (Capistrano Valley), Brian Madden (El Modena), Dennis Manzo (Servite), Colleen McGough (Ocean View), Robert Nelson (La Quinta), Scott Ohls (Savanna), Paul Ohshima (Marina), Brian Rea (Marina), Brady Richards (Orange), Scott Richardson (Dana Hills), Andy Rothman (Estancia), David Searle (Edison), Robert Son (Sunny Hills), Brian Sherian (Pacifica), J.J. White (Irvine), Tiger Woods (Western), Steve Yun (Fountain Valley), Bret Yunker (Los Alamitos), Greg Zitek (Brea-Olinda).

Important dates: Free-lance team qualifying, California Country Club, Whittier, April 20; Southern Regional, Santa Ana Country Club; Western Regional, Royal Vista County Club, Pomona; Central Regional, Colony Country Club, Murrieta, May 11; Southern Section team championship, Canyon Country Club, Palm Springs, May 18; Southern Section individual championship, Hacienda Country Club, La Habra, May 26; CIF-Southern California Golf Assn. team and individual championships, San Diego Country Club, June 10.

Notes: Trabuco Hills, which tied Estancia for the Pacific Coast League title last season, returns three all-league players along with Christensen, and many see the Mustangs as a team that could break Estancia’s three-year hold on the Southern Section championship. El Toro and Huntington Beach are other county teams given such a chance. Strong teams from outside the county should include Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Palos Verdes Peninsula and Long Beach Wilson. . . . Alicia Alison, who was Foothill’s No. 1 player as a freshman last season, will miss most of this season after breaking a bone in her ankle while snowboarding in Colorado last month. . . . Scott Richardson, a two-time all-county player, transferred to Santa Margarita for the fall semester but has returned to Dana Hills.