On the 8th Hole, the Bogeyman Lurks Just Over the Hill

Having smoked his drive--a gorgeous shot that has carried beyond the crest of a rolling ridge--golfer Fred Lambert is sounding cocky.

“An easy six--eeeaasy six,” he says breezily, hefting a six-iron. From here, he is staring down the gut of one of the more treacherous holes in Los Angeles: the dogleg, par-4 8th at Griffith Park’s Franklin D. Roosevelt Municipal Golf Course, one of those old courses exploiting natural terrain--rugged hills, deep ravines, old trees carpeted with heavy undergrowth.

Lambert’s cool belies the hazards ahead. His downhill approach must elude two bunkers. Just beyond the green to the left is a precipitous down-slope--the fast track to a double-bogey, if not worse. Lambert is angling to loft his shot slightly right, a delicate chip that must clear the right bunker to land at the flagstick.

But noooooooooo!

Instead, he shanks it. The ball--a mortar shot--takes off at an alarming angle, a towering trajectory headed straight for the tree-covered hillside to his right.

“Way wrong!” Lambert cries out.

Others in his foursome are having their own problems, scuttling their way toward a bogey and two triple-bogeys. The 59-year-old Lambert, meanwhile, treks into the trees and finds his ball behind the trunk of a massive pine, looking like a fallen egg.

“Hell,” he mutters.

His confidence not so apparent now, he bangs his next shot all of 12 feet, into a clump of weeds.

Chalk him up--another golfer brought down to earth.

Triple-bogey.

*

Golf is like life--a game of ups and downs, the clubhouse pundits will tell you. You face obstacles and try to meet them with cunning, self-control and courage. You have the company of friends or family, but when you get right down to it, when that wedge shot disappears down the canyon, you are more or less alone.

If golf is a test of character, then an especially difficult hole, a real nail-biter, is a thing of merit. As a golfing mecca, Los Angeles is a city abounding in such torture chambers--for example, the par-5 18th at the city’s Rancho Park course. A plaque there hails the day, 31 years ago, when Arnold Palmer--in his prime, yet--misfired his way to an ungodly 12.

But the 8th here in Griffith Park--on an unheralded nine-hole course--just may be, yard for yard, the No. 1 gut-check in town. The hole is 346 yards, first uphill, then down. Any way you slice it--or hook it--you end up battling the trees, the slopes and the sand traps. The only spot of level ground on the entire hole is at the tee; and, of course, you cannot see the green from there.

What you can see are a fence crowding you to the left, a steep hillside of trees on the right. And the fairway: climbing to the ridge 170 yards out, and tilted sharply left.

“Most of these gentleman are getting 40, 50 yards off the tee,” a miserable start to any hole, course manager Ed Estrada boasts as he watches a new group prepare to go. “They’re super-intimidated. Watch this guy, maybe he’ll give you a little demonstration.”

Out of earshot, the golfer whips his club through the ball. The ideal drive is to clear the ridge with a slight fade, following the dogleg.

But noooooooooo!

Not this time. It is a high, severe slice. A satisfied smile flickers across Estrada’s face.

“Right into the trees.”

*

Golf pro Brady Riggs, who is also the course starter, figures that maybe one player in five attains par here on the 8th, but today that estimate seems high. Kit Wilkinson, 34, of Hollywood, is one of the successful ones. Her drive clears the ridge, and she follows with two solid shots to a short putt.

Others in her foursome are not so fortunate. Steve Muscarella, 37, lets fly with a fine drive--”my best hit all day”--and follows with the kind of utter breakdown that can cause hives or lip tremors. His second shot, a blind approach from just short of the ridge, is muffed, traveling 25 yards. (“Oh, Steve! Damn it!”) Then comes a third blind shot--a seven-iron meant to shortcut the dogleg directly to the green.

But noooooooooo!

It is wide right, up on the hillside rough above the right trap. From there, his wedge shot (“Boy, this is a bad lie . . . “) goes over the green, down the ravine. Next, clunk, he hits a tree.

All in all, he is lucky to salvage an 8.

In another foursome, Claude Swonger, 45, has to tee it up twice after clouting a parabolic first shot into the trees. But a partner, Chang Ho, 43, blisters a picture-book drive that appears to find the middle of the fairway beyond the ridge. In the strange karma of golf, Ho cannot find the ball anyway, and he and Swonger eventually end up in the same sand trap.

Swonger’s shot coming out hits a rake. Ho’s shot out does not even come out; it stays in the sand, and he takes a double-bogey 6. Swonger says he stopped counting at 5.

Hour by hour, the golfers keep coming, testing themselves, playing the emotional spectrum from elation to heartbreak. Jock Murray, 86, slapping fairway drives with his four-wood; the teen-agers, flexing their young muscle; crafty businessmen playing hooky, and the retired battlers like 76-year-old Con Dely.

Following his “worst shot of the day,” a whizzing grounder that shoots up into the trees like a scared rabbit, Dely is looking for that miraculous recovery. He punches the ball out from under a pine tree, then lines up for a sharp downhill shot 70 yards from the green. To reach the flagstick, he must clear the near bunker while avoiding that steep downhill to the left.

He has that determined look, that carefully measured swing.

But noooooooooo!