He’ll Carry a Torch as Well as His Clubs : Golf: Ben Crenshaw has never won at Riviera, but his love of the course is as strong as ever.

There was a break in the rain Tuesday at the Riviera Country Club and Ben Crenshaw, who was on the driving range, looked out at the course and said:

“I know art when I see it and this is it. There is so much to this course.”

Crenshaw has played in the Nissan Los Angeles Open, which begins Thursday, every year since 1974.

A golf traditionalist, Crenshaw reveres older, established courses and Riviera, which opened for play in June of 1927, is one of his favorites.

“It requires something different on every hole,” he said. “As far as a player goes, you know you have to hit every type of shot. It’s not just left to right and right to left. It’s the height of the shots.

“This course is (just) like it was in 1927. It was an ambitious project back then.”

With the forecast of more rain, Crenshaw said the course probably will yield more low scores if it’s playable.

“This course plays far the best when the greens are real firm,” he said. “You couldn’t think about the pin, unless you drove it in a perfect spot, because of the firmness of the greens.

“The course is very subtle--the way it is laid out, the way the greens sit and the way the fairway bunkers are positioned.”

Crenshaw then pointed to the nearby 10th hole, a par-four measuring only 311 yards.

“If there ever was a great temptation, it’s No. 10,” he said. “Anyone who sees it from the tee for the first time thinks, ‘Look, I can go straight for the green.’ ”

However, the small 10th green is protected by bunkers and there is risk involved, inherent in the design, in trying to land a tee shot on the green with a long drive.

“If the hole yields an occasional two that’s fine, but there are a lot of fives, too. It’s a brilliant hole,” Crenshaw said.

Crenshaw said the greens at Riviera are “extra subtle . . . so subtle they’ll lull you to sleep. You end up lipping the ball out (of the cup). Everybody has a tendency to over-read these greens.”

Crenshaw designs golf courses and has been asked by Riviera management to reconstruct the greens, a project that is expected to start in May.

“If no one can tell we were here, that’s our goal,” he said. “I don’t think the greens have been touched since the course was built. It’s very difficult for greens to last forever.

“The interior contours will be exactly the same, but the outlines of the greens will be pulled out, adding more square footage, because greens tend to shrink over a long period of time.”

Crenshaw has never won the L.A. Open, coming close, though, when he lost in a playoff to T.C. Chen in 1987.

As for his own game, the 1984 Masters champion said he was erratic last year. He won the Centel Western Open and finished 31st on the money list.

“It has been feast or famine,” he said.

“At the Western Open, I did everything well and there was no indication of that the week before. It’s a strange game.”

It would seem fitting that Crenshaw should finally win at Riviera after his long love affair with the course. But Crenshaw knows golf is a perverse game.

“Riviera is an examination in golf,” he said. “You know that Snead and Hogan and everyone who has played this course knew that before they went out each day they had to execute something differently than at other courses.

“If I think of one feature, it would be the bunkering. Take the bunker on the sixth hole in the middle of the green. That’s preposterous. However, when you look at it, it just blends right in, perfect proportion.”