GOLF / RICH TOSCHES : Kearns, 70, Finds Shooting His Age Mere Child’s Play

Golf has always been a goal-oriented game. Some of the more common goals include:

* To play just one round of golf in a lifetime without having to bellow FORE as you send a screeching missile into a group of startled, wide-eyed players on an adjacent fairway.

* If you are a man, to negotiate 18 greens in a day without leaving a 10-foot putt five feet short of the cup and having to endure your partners’ sing-song taunting, Excuse Me, Ma’am, Does Your Husband Play Golf?

* To blast a ball perfectly from a sand trap on not your eighth attempt, but on the very first.

* To build enough confidence in your swing so that on a hole that plays over a lake, you can’t actually see and hear the ball splash into the water before you begin your backswing.

OK, so golfers don’t set real high goals for themselves. But they are goals nonetheless.

A few players, however, do set lofty standards.

And among the highest of all is this one: to shoot your age.

Drop a 65 on the score card at the age of 65, etc. Few have done it. It happens once in a while on the PGA Senior Tour.

And it happens once in a while at the Lakeside Country Club in North Hollywood, whenever Dr. Walter Kearns of Woodland Hills is on his game.

Kearns, 70, has shot his age three times this year over the tough Lakeside layout. His best round came last week when he carded a scorching 66. A still-practicing general surgeon based in the West Valley, Kearns began playing golf in Milwaukee 58 years ago. He excelled at it and played in the U.S. Amateur Championship at the age of 19 and won a berth on the Princeton golf team in the early 1940s.

But when he entered medical school, competitive golf became a distant whisper.

“For 50 years I was only a gentleman golfer,” Kearns said. “I’d play when I could but never regularly.”

But at 65, he eased back on his medical schedule and began retuning his golf game. And he discovered, startlingly, that not much had changed in a half-century.

“The last few years have been a real joy for me,” Kearns said. “When I started playing and practicing again regularly, it all came back to me. I started playing more and more and really got the game sharpened up.”

At 67, Kearns achieved the shoot-your-age goal by firing a 66 at Lakeside. He has done it four times since. But the 66 last week was the ultimate, he said.

“Shooting your age is a pretty difficult thing to do,” he said. “But shooting four strokes under your age, well, that’s really something. As a doctor, I am optimistic about the possibilities of human beings exceeding the traditional boundaries. Older people are showing over and over that they can do better than they ever have before. No one really knows how good we can be. Age doesn’t automatically put us in the back seat anymore.”

Kearns plays two or three times a week at Lakeside, where he has been a member for 30 years. And he still takes lessons from the pros there. Because even with 58 years of golfing experience, he knows it is the most demanding and at times frustrating of games.

“Golf has always been fun for me,” he said. “But I need a direction when I play, a motivation to improve. I just can’t go out and shoot a 95 and have any fun.”

Of course, Kearns admits he has never shot a 95. At least not in the last 50 years. For those golfers--and there are a lot of you--for whom a 95 is reason to snap open a bottle of cheap champagne, shooting your age may never be a realistic goal. Barring, of course, a sudden energy surge when you reach the age of 110.

So set another goal for yourself. Perhaps shooting your body temperature.

Qualifying: Five local golfers have qualified for the U.S. Amateur, including David Berganio Jr. of Sylmar and Charlie Wi of Thousand Oaks. Berganio, the 1991 U.S. Public Links and Pacific Coast Amateur champion who will be a senior at Arizona in the fall, tied for the top qualifying berth at the treacherous Wood Ranch Country Club in Simi Valley, shooting rounds of 69 and 71 Monday. Wi, the 1990 California Amateur champion who will be a junior at Nevada in the fall, was one stroke back. Yukinori Miyashita of Simi Valley also earned a berth with a 143.

Chris Zambri of Thousand Oaks and USC shot a 146 and earned an alternate berth in the championship.

At the Saticoy Country Club in Camarillo, Don Baker of Canoga Park led all qualifiers with a 36-hole total of 139, four under par. Jason Gore of Valencia also qualified, shooting a 147; Laurence O’Neil of Camarillo earned an alternate berth with a 148.

Mitch Voges of Simi Valley is the defending U.S. Amateur champion. He did not have to qualify for the 1992 tournament, which will be played Aug. 25-30 at Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, Ohio.

Shark: John Daly, the long-hitting 1991 PGA champion, and 1992 U.S. Open champion Tom Kite will join host Greg Norman, Jack Nicklaus, Fred Couples, Raymond Floyd and others in the 1992 Shark Shootout at the Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks.

The $1-million tournament will be played Nov. 20-22. Twenty of the world’s top players are paired into two-man teams for the 54-hole event.

The Frank F. Kowski Memorial golf tournament, in memory of the former Southwest Regional director of the National Park Service, will be held Sept. 28 at the Sunset Hills Golf Course in Thousand Oaks.

Information: 818-597-1036 (ext. 232).