Golfers Swarm to the Courses as Fairway Weather Returns to L.A.

Phillip Robertson jumped up and down in little circles, waving his arms in the air.

“It’s stopped raining!” he shouted over and over from the walkway of the Arroyo Seco Golf Course in South Pasadena. “We can play golf!”

For Roberts, an 18-year-old student at Pasadena City College, and thousands of others similarly addicted in Southern California, the long, painful withdrawal was finally over Tuesday.

“The grass is kind of long, the course is kind of wet and the greens are kind of slow, but who the hell cares?” Ted Johnson, 53, of Pasadena said to no one in particular as he gazed serenely at the fairways. “What matters is golf and that’s what we’re doing.”

“There are good people here, it’s a nice day, what more do you need?” 76-year-old Bill Sutton asked as he headed back to the clubhouse after nine leisurely holes at Arroyo.

“I’m retired,” Sutton said. “For days now, I’ve been reading books, looking at calendars with pretty girls in them. What else was there to do? You can only do so much grocery shopping.”

T.D. Scaringi, 35, of Woodland Hills said he had been waiting a month to return to the links. “The only bad thing is that I have to go back to work tomorrow,” he said.

With the first real break in the weather after three weeks of rain, business was brisk at Arroyo Seco.

“The phones have been ringing off the wall all morning,” said Gary Bailes, the 55-year-old starter at the course next to the Pasadena Freeway. “It’s great. Just great.”

The fairways were also filled at Brookside Golf Course, beside the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, where many of the players were participating in the Golden State Tour competition.

One of the competitors was Eric Hoos, 31, of Louisville, Colo.

“I’d been sitting there in Colorado, where there’s been snow on the ground since Thanksgiving, looking forward to coming out here and getting a tan,” Hoos said. “Isn’t it supposed to be sunny all the time in Southern California?”

Hoos had arrived here Saturday, planning to get a few practice rounds before the competition started. “Instead, I sat in my room and watched television,” he said.

Barbara Lembas of Canyon Country and her friend, Franzel Venable of Glendale, weren’t participating in the tournament but they weren’t just standing around watching either.

They were playing a private match of their own, the first golf either of them had been able to play in two weeks.

“I try to play two times a week, and when I don’t, that’s bad,” Lembas said. “It took me a while to get my swing back, but on the back nine, it started to get better.

“Am I glad to be back?

“Yes I am. Oh, yes.”