GOLF / MAL FLORENCE : Brodie Returns to Victory Site

When John Brodie returns to Rancho Park Golf Course Friday to compete in the Ralphs Senior Classic, he will be amused if two of his “friends” are in the gallery.

Brodie, the former San Francisco 49er and Stanford star quarterback, won his first tournament on the Senior Tour last year at Rancho.

“Two guys were following me last year and they had this big jug,” Brodie recalled. “It kept getting lighter at the end of the day. These guys were both about 6-foot-4 and weighed around 280 pounds.

“When somebody asked later at the bar who won, these two guys said in unanimity, ‘The damn football player won.’ ”

Brodie still chuckles over the incident. He likes the ambience of the public course.

“It’s a great course in a great part of the town. There’s a lot of tradition and nostalgia to it, and a lot of people who are interested in golf.

“There is not a lot of the upper echelon social structure there (like a country club). You get the people who like golf and have followed it for years. This is a great week for them.”

Brodie, 57, has been on the Senior Tour since 1985 and has had marginal success.

His first victory hasn’t been a platform to reach a higher echelon--at least, so far.

He is 59th on the money winning list, earning $84,000, and has only one top 10 finish.

“I haven’t played well all year, but everything else in my life is going great,” Brodie said. “I’ve just been hunting for it (his game). I have some reasons to think I’ll be doing a little better in the near future. But that’s golf.”

Brodie, who lives near the 10th tee at La Quinta Country Club, played with 49ers from 1957 through 1973, earning All-Pro recognition during his career.

He later became a television football analyst for nine years, working the Rose Bowl, Orange Bowl, Super Bowl and other events. Then, one day he gave it up.

“I had come to an impasse in broadcasting,” he said. “On the level of what I was doing, I had really run out of things to say in football. The game wasn’t as exciting to me as it was when I first got there when I knew the players and knew the interactions and matchups.

“Every situation has its cycle. I didn’t know I was going to quit playing football until one morning I woke up and quit.”

Brodie is renowned along with Roman Gabriel and Mike Ditka for hastening the merger of the NFL and AFL in 1966. They signed with AFL teams while under contract to their NFL clubs.

“I played nine years with the 49ers, made all pro and I was making $25,000 a year. That’s when Houston came along and I said ‘Wait a minute. I want to talk to these guys.’ They (49ers) didn’t believe it, so I signed with Houston.

“Then they got the leagues together and everybody got double (salary). The whole money structure changed, everything had been so suppressed. As an example, the 49ers were paying me $25,000 and they had a 4 1/2 million dollar insurance policy on me.”

So Brodie was a catalyst in the merger. He never played for Houston, but got his money and finished his career with the 49ers.

The Senior Tour has been escalating in popularity and in purses. The competition has been elevated since Raymond Floyd and Isao Aoki joined the tour with Tom Weiskopf and Bob Murphy to follow.

Brodie welcomes them to the tour.

“The same scores do good,” he said. “It doesn’t matter who’s there. It’s funny how it affects some of the guys (on the Senior Tour). Certain guys shoot higher scores when these guys play. I don’t concern myself with that. I know what I need to shoot to do well.

“I will say Raymond Floyd is a wonderful player and has won out here. People talk about the shortness of the golf courses we play. His scoring average is better on the regular tour than it is on ours after four or five tournaments.

“Some of the criticism (Senior Tour) doesn’t hold up. Play is pretty exceptional.”

Asked how he adapted his pro football skills to golf, Brodie said:

“I love games, all games. I won’t say there were too many acquired abilities that would apply to golf that you obtained through football other than the fact that you have to put your attention where it’s supposed to be at a given time.

“That’s something innate anyway. Certain people can never get it and other people have it. The game itself is totally different.

“I went to Stanford to play baseball and basketball and ended up playing football and golf.”

As for his own game, Brodie keeps it simple.

“Anybody asks me how I’m doing. I say the best I can. Next case. Let others do all the evaluating.”

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Rancho Park was in relatively poor condition--along with some other city courses--last year because 13 greens were lost to fungus three months before the senior tournament.

Jim Van Meter, course superintendent at Rancho, said the course is in better condition now. “We got our irrigation problems straightened out and the greens are in good shape,” he said.

Rancho has 15 alternate greens now.

“This summer if we had a green that went into a little bit of stress, or some disease problems we would take it out of play,” Van Meter said. “It’s amazing the recovery of a green if you take it out of play for a few days.”

Rancho is the busiest course in the world with approximately 130,000 rounds a year.

Golf Notes

Lake Forest Golf and Practice center will have a drop-in child care facility starting Wednesday. Children six weeks to seven months will be cared for while parents play golf . . . Family Solutions golf tournament to benefit abused children will be held Nov. 13 at Tustin Rancho Golf Club . . . Hollywood Park Sports Center, adjacent to the race track, will open Tuesday at 5 p.m. The center will include a two tier driving range, an 18-hole natural grass putting course, and a 36-hole miniature golf course.

The Encino course in the Sepulveda Basin that was devastated by floods last winter from heavy rain will be open for 18 holes of play on Oct. 26 . . . Justin Hicks, a UCLA senior walk-on golfer, was the medalist at the recent Wolfpack Classic at the Edgewater CC in Lake Tahoe. He was two under par for 54 holes.

The 12th annual Lou Rawls charity golf tournament benefiting the United Negro College Fund will be held Oct. 26 at Brookside Golf Course . . . The 17th annual Retired Military Senior tournament will be held Nov. 6-7 at Palm Meadows (Norton Air Force Base) and Oak Valley (Beaumont) . . . Construction has started on the Canyon Course at Pelican Hill Golf Club in Newport Coast . . . The Century Club Matches, the annual competition between amateur and professional players, will be held Saturday and Sunday at San Diego Country Club.