GOLF NOTEBOOK / MARTIN BECK : Flood Control Project Slices Into River View

Bob Keane knows the Santa Ana River can be an inhospitable host.

He has seen heavy winter rains swell the river and inundate much of River View Golf Course, which he owns with his mother, Pat Keane, and his friend, Steve Hart.

So it wasn’t much of a shock when the Army Corps of Engineers started hacking into fairways with earth-moving equipment several months ago. The work, part of a $1.4-billion flood control project along the river, has closed most of River View’s back nine holes. But the rest of the course is still open for play.

It’s now a nine-hole course again, as it was when the Keanes and Hart bought it in 1988--just in much better shape.

The owners were resourceful when they learned of the flood-control plans about a year ago. Instead of fighting the federal government, they asked the Army Corps of Engineers to take the course into account. Along much of the project, a concrete channel is being built. On this stretch, roughly between 17th Street and Memory Lane, there will be a gentle slope covered with earth.

“The Army Corps of Engineers have been great,” Keane said. “They changed their whole design to make sure the golf course could go back in.”

After this phase of the flood-control project, scheduled to be finished this winter, River View’s back nine will be reconstructed. When the full course reopens--the owners are hoping for August, 1995--it will be par 71 instead of 70 and about 6,500 yards instead of 6,000.

Best of all, they say, the river shouldn’t cause as many problems as it did before.

Meanwhile, the sod from the greens on the back nine has been added to the putting green. The course now has about 30,000 square feet of putting surface, which will be used for an 18-hole putting course expected to open Friday.

“We put our heart and souls and wallets into building those greens and to see someone tearing them out with a tractor would have been painful,” Hart said.

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Keane says River View, located near the Bristol-Santa Clara intersection in Santa Ana, is one of the best golf bargains in the county. Weekday greens fees are $10 for nine holes and $14 for 18; on weekends it’s $10 and $16. Range balls are $5 for a large bucket and golfers may hit off either grass or mats. There will be no charge for using the putting course.

Best of all, it’s rarely crowded.

“Nobody really knows about it because it’s off the beaten track,” Keane said.

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Open man: Anaheim’s Don Shevorski will compete in his third consecutive U.S. Senior Open when he tees off Thursday at the No. 2 course at Pinehurst Country Club in North Carolina.

Shevorski, 53, a longtime amateur player, turned professional when he turned 50.

“I was getting a little tired of playing against the college kids,”

Shevorski said by phone from Pinehurst.

Shevorski, a tour representative for a golf club company, has played in about five Senior PGA Tour events. He missed the Senior Open cut by two strokes in 1992 and struggled last year after learning about two hours before his tee time that he had made the field as an alternate.

“I don’t have these expectations of winning the Open,” he said. “I want to play and I want to do well. It’s a dream: you want to play golf with the best.

“I have no illusions of being able to beat Jack Nicklaus. That won’t happen but I’d like to do well and make the cut. Most of all I’d like to have fun.”