A Fourth Title Will Be a Longshot : Golf: Lack of depth could keep Estancia, which has won three consecutive section championships, from extending its streak.

It’s been four years since a golf team other than Estancia’s has won a Southern Section championship, but that could change today.

Lacking the depth of previous teams, Estancia was the last team to advance to the championship from its regional tournament and is a longshot to win the title at Canyon Country Club in Palm Springs.

So how are things within a teetering mini-dynasty? Just fine, says senior Paul Hinkle.

“It’d be nice to play well but I’m not worried about it,” he said. “This is my fourth one, so I’m kind of getting used to it.

“Getting nervous would just get in the way.”

Such confidence is abundant in the Estancia program, the first to win three consecutive section titles since Chula Vista did it in 1957, ’58 and ’59.

The streak is even more remarkable because the tournament format sometimes rewards good fortune more than skill. Most golf tournaments are held over several days to maximize the number of rounds played. But to minimize the amount of class time players miss, the winner is decided after 18 holes.

“You have to be so lucky on the day of the competition,” Estancia Coach Art Perry said. “Even though you’re good, sometimes that doesn’t mean you are going to win.”

Perry, the Estancia activities director who has been a lower level football coach at the school since 1974, had been persuaded by his brother, Chuck, to start a junior varsity golf program in 1986.

The school had a solid, if not spectacular, program. The Eagles won a golf title in 1968 when Chuck was starting quarterback on the football team, but since then it had been all quiet on the Estancia links.

Two years later, in Art and Chuck’s first season as co-coaches of the varsity, the Eagles finished fourth in the section and they had people at the tournament asking, “Who’s Estancia?”

No one was asking that question for long.

“This is the ideal site for a golf school--a good country club close by and two great public courses across the street,” said Art Perry, who this season is coaching the Eagles without Chuck.

The facilities certainly don’t hurt. Nearby Mesa Verde Country Club, which played host to several LPGA Tour tournaments in the mid-1980s, allows up to eight Estancia players on the course five days a week and the City of Costa Mesa is generous with tee times on its two 18-hole courses.

To be successful in high school golf, Perry says, you must have plenty of golfers. He says he tries to develop at least four or five in each grade level.

“It’s a numbers game,” he said. “You never know who’s going to turn onto the game and excel. That’s why we have two junior varsity teams.”

With so many players--the Eagles usually carry about 30 players a season--battling for so few spots, the intra-team qualifying tournaments were often tougher than interscholastic competition.

Consider Brad Miller, who developed into a solid golfer after almost being cut as a freshman.

Miller, who graduated last year, played in several varsity matches his junior and senior years, but wasn’t able to crack the varsity lineup in the post-season until the final event of his senior season, the Southern California Regional championship, where Miller had his team’s best score, helping the Eagles to a second-place finish.

“I always knew I was a lot better than a lot of the players on other teams,” Miller said. “At many other schools I knew I would have been the No. 1 player but I couldn’t even make our team.

“You can’t even explain how frustrating that is.”

This season, Estancia is not nearly as deep. Three seniors--Hinkle, Chris Beck and Andy Rothman--are the only experienced players. Two juniors, Mike Artiglio and Matt Chapman, and a sophomore, Chris Sandro, round out the lineup.

It’s going to be quite a challenge to repeat this season,” Beck said. “You can’t dwell on the streak because you would go crazy, but it would be nice to go out with a bang.”