GOLF NOTEBOOK / MARTIN BECK and STEVE KRESAL : How to Enjoy Pelican Hill for $9

For those who find the $125 mid-week greens fees at Pelican Hill Golf Club a bit daunting but still want a taste of golf’s good life, an answer is at hand.

At a fraction of the cost, you can hit balls, chip or putt at the course’s practice center. The center, which has been open nearly a year, is available to everyone, even those who don’t play one of the two 18-hole resort courses.

For the price of a $9 large bag of balls, you get the same country-club style service and the same views of the California coast.

“The whole setting is a special place to work on your golf game, even if you can’t afford to come out here and play everyday,” said Glenn Deck, the head teaching professional at the center.

Deck and his staff, of course, also offer lessons. Private lessons range from $40 for about 45 minutes with an assistant PGA to $75 for Deck or Derek Hardy, one of the top 50 instructors in the nation, according to Golf magazine.

Sandra Palmer, an LPGA teaching professional who won the 1975 U.S. Women’s Open, is also on staff. Group lessons are available.

For an extra $20, a student can have his or her swing analyzed on video by A-Star, a state-of-the-art computer system that offers a golfer an instant chance to look at his swing from all sides. It features a video monitor and four cameras. After a student hits a shot, the instructor can run it back in normal speed, slow motion or frame by frame.

Using a split video screen, the program can compare the student’s swing to optimum swings by PGA Tour professionals. “It really tends to speed up the learning process,” Deck said.

Deck said the staff concentrates on working out each student’s unique difficulties, instead of imposing a single swing system. Drills are emphasized so that players can continue to improve on their own time.

“Our goal is to be the No. 1 teaching center on the West Coast if not the entire United States,” Deck said.

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One challenger to that throne is the Aviara Golf Academy in Carlsbad.

The school, run by Kip Puterbaugh, was recently remodeled, making it one of the most technologically advanced in Southern California.

Puterbaugh, who is ranked among the top 50 teachers in the nation by Golf magazine, currently works with touring professionals Scott Simpson and Dennis Paulson.

Like Pelican Hill, Aviara has an A-Star machine.

Puterbaugh has spent about all of the last two years filming several PGA players, and has the swings loaded into the computer, for comparisons with students’ swings.

All the tape of a student’s swings as well as the teacher’s comments are recorded on a take-home tape.

“What you end up doing is improving faster,” Puterbaugh said. “You end up taking home the whole lesson. The students I have worked with have basically fallen in love with this machine.”

The school at Aviara features an all-grass driving range, a large sand trap and putting green as well as two covered hitting stalls that hold the A-Star machines.

But learning on the cutting edge doesn’t come cheap. The four-day school costs $1,295 and covers all aspects of the game, including two playing lessons on the Four Seasons Resort’s Aviara course that was designed by Arnold Palmer. It costs $995 for three days. The school deals with the most basic parts of the game, such as the grip and extend to the mental aspects of the game.

The student-to-teacher ratio is no higher than five-to-one.

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Closer to home is the Jim Colbert Golf School at the MacArthur Place Practice Center in Santa Ana.

Although it isn’t as high-tech as Pelican Hill or Aviara, PGA teaching professional Andy Gaither says his school is without peer in California.

Named for its owner, a standout player on the PGA Senior Tour, the Colbert school is actually based on a system developed by Jimmy Ballard, a prominent teaching professional in Palm Beach, Fla.

Ballard has tutored more than 250 tour players, including Curtis Strange, Hal Sutton, Seve Ballesteros, Johnny Miller and Colbert.

Ballard helped resuscitate Colbert’s playing career after he was forced to quit the regular tour in 1987 because of a bad back. Colbert started a golf management company--it ran Tustin Ranch Golf Club for a time--and was an ESPN analyst.

Colbert started the golf school at Tustin Ranch, bringing in two longtime Ballard-trained professionals, Gaither and Jane Rosenberg. The school moved to its current location in November.

Gaither says experience with Ballard’s teaching methods make a big difference.

“All teachers are good,” Gaither said. “Everybody has good things to offer, there’s no question about that. But we feel we have more to offer because of Jimmy Ballard and Jim Colbert.”

The school’s student-to-teacher ratio is never greater than three-to-one in group lessons (six hours for $155 or $125 during lunchtime on weekdays). Private lessons are $65 an hour and include videotaping.

“We keep it simple,” Gaither said. “It’s just the fundamentals of what the great ball strikers throughout history have done.”