GOLF / STEVE ELLING : At 64, Duke Still Playing Aces on Aces

Donna Duke started a second volume. No problem. Just bought another album for her score cards and certificates.

Her commemorative trophy keeps growing too.

“It’s so heavy I can hardly lift it,” Duke said.

Who says one is the loneliest number? Not Duke, a 64-year-old who lives in Camarillo and collects holes in one by the bunch.

She has 40 aces, which is almost a whole deck. It’s a singular distinction.

Most golfers go a lifetime without making a hole in one. One publication estimated the chances of recording an ace at 400,000 to one. Duke racked up 12 in 1985 alone, a national record. Let the computer digest those numbers for a week or two.

Duke has so many ones it’s onerous. Adding to the trophy--on which each of the 40 lucky balls is mounted--is becoming pricey. A friend who handled the trophy mounting free of charge isn’t around anymore.

“After the next couple, I may have to stop adding to it,” Duke said. “I can’t afford to keep adding to that thing.”

One has to like her confidence. Not a matter of if, but when. Duke is the John Wayne of aces. Swaggers into town, shoots up the place, then leaves.

Duke keeps track of each ace in a scrapbook, which was quickly filled. She started another to handle the overflow. Truth be told, the second hasn’t seen much use lately.

Duke’s most recent ace came last November, which means she’s in the midst of an eight-month dry spell.

“Seems like two years since I played,” she said.

It isn’t so much a slump as it is a lack of opportunity. Duke lives in a 2,336-home retirement community in Camarillo and last month became president of its board of directors. If she’s lucky, Duke plays once a week.

Next July, her term expires, whereupon full-throttle golf will resume.

“I don’t think it’ll take long to get back into it,” she said.

It being the hole, of course. It has happened so often over the past 14 years people have grown skeptical.

Duke has answered the best way she knows. In 1988, a sportscaster from an area television station read of Duke’s exploits and arranged for her to meet a camera crew on the 14th hole at River Ridge Golf Course in Oxnard.

Duke stepped to the tee of the 122-yard par-three hole. She was given three balls.

The first wound up on the fringe of the green. The second rolled to within three feet of the flag. The third, well, let’s say the sportscaster left a true believer.

“It rolled right over the darned hole and stopped about a foot past it,” Duke said.

Nonetheless, there are those who continue to ask questions, even though each of her aces has been witnessed by playing partners and certified by the club pro.

Golf Digest, a magazine that gives certificates for attested holes in one, long has given Duke the evil eye. The magazine continues to certify her feats but has raised a few questions along the way.

Duke, who didn’t record her first ace until 1981, briefly considered suing the magazine to restore her credibility.

“They have this thing about (players) actually seeing the ball go in the hole,” she said. “That’s not always possible.

“Now, I don’t carry a rabbit with me. . . . I tell everyone I have a trained gopher.”

That Duke has become an accomplished player--she carries an eight handicap--isn’t particularly surprising. Before she took up golf in earnest in 1981 she was a bowler with a 182 average, but a bad back forced her to give it up. She played competitive softball for years before that.

“I quit when it took a home run to make it to first base,” Duke cracked.

She’s still hitting solo shots.

Duke has been asked the secret to her success almost every day. It’s simple, really. At least, the way she explains it.

Call it stick-to-itiveness.

“I aim for the stick,” she said. “Since I don’t put backspin on the ball, I let it land short and roll to the pin.

“Really, I just aim at the flag every time and let it roll on up there.”

It tends to roll on in there too.

*

Kid stuff: There was a time when Julius Boros looked at John Palumbo with wide eyes and unabashed envy. Palumbo viewed Boros as a diamond in the rough. Actually, in 1934, Boros was still a chunk of coal.

Sixty years ago, Palumbo won the men’s city championship in Bridgeport, Conn. Boros was a 13-year-old golf wanna-be from the same neighborhood, a caddie who couldn’t get enough of the game. Palumbo was 18, which to Boros, made him a grizzled veteran worth emulating.

“He thought I was something special,” Palumbo said, laughing. “Heck, he was just a kid then.”

The two shared a bond that spanned seven decades. Palumbo, a retired schoolteacher who moved to Los Angeles in 1954 and lives in Van Nuys, stayed in touch with his boyhood friend. And while Palumbo continued to play the game for fun, Boros carved a niche as one of the sport’s legends.

Boros, who died at his home in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., earlier this summer at age 74, counted four majors--a pair of U.S. Open and PGA championships--among his numerous pro titles. Yet when he started playing the game as a kid in Connecticut, he had a few holes in his game.

Boros had a slice that nagged him briefly, but his swing eventually developed into one of the smoothest the pro tour has known. Boros played golf as though he was sauntering along the beach, as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

Boros often said: “Swing softly, hit hard.”

Arnold Palmer swings a club like he had a badger in his shorts. Gary Player almost falls during his follow-through. By comparison, Boros’ swing was fluid, almost effortless, and he had the temperament to match.

Six years ago, the last time Palumbo saw Boros, the latter was playing in a Senior PGA Tour event on the West Coast. Boros asked Palumbo, now 78, what his handicap was.

“Aw, about a 14,” Palumbo said, half-embarrassed to admit it.

“Don’t feel too bad,” Boros said with a grin. “I’m about an eight.”

Marty Tregnan of the L.A. Municipal Golf Assn. likes to tell his golf pals that Palumbo, a former president of the Sepulveda Men’s Golf Club, was Boros’ mentor. Palumbo downplays the assertion, yet during an interview in the 1950s, Boros called Palumbo his “idol.”

It’s a two-way street.

“I have a whole scrapbook filled with stuff (about Boros),” Palumbo said. “He was a wonderful guy. I’ll miss him.”

*

Fast fact: The Southern California Golf Assn. Championship, which runs Friday through Sunday at Hacienda Golf Club in La Habra Heights, has been conducted annually since 1900, making it the second-oldest continually contested amateur event in the nation. It isn’t second by much, either.

Utah staged its first championship in 1899. The U.S. Open and U.S. Amateur are older but were suspended during war years.

Previous SCGA champions include Al Geiberger, Barry Jaeckel, Mark Pfeil and Tony Sills, all former PGA Tour standouts.

Among those on the tour who failed to win the always competitive tournament are Craig Stadler, Scott Simpson, Corey Pavin, Steve Pate and Mark O’Meara.

*

Pac-Men: Three of the top four finishers in last weekend’s Ventura City Championship play at Pacific 10 Conference schools and all three are from the area.

Charlie Wi of North Hills and California fired a two-under 70 Sunday at Olivas Park Golf Course to finish at 143, edging Chad Wright of Ventura (USC) by one shot. Jason Gore of Valencia (Arizona), who has won the Pac-10 title the last two years, was fourth at 146.

Wi, a fifth-year senior, birdied the 544-yard 18th hole to break a tie with Wright. Using a driver, Wi hit a pair of booming shots into a breeze, the second clearing a small lake fronting the green to seal the victory.

“I just went for it,” Wi said. “I was only one under for the day. I didn’t come there to finish second.”

Moments later, Wright missed a 12-foot birdie attempt on No. 18 that would have forced a playoff.

All three players are entered in the SCGA Championship this weekend. Wi and Gore have accepted invitations to play in the Western Amateur, one of the nation’s premier events, next month in Benton Harbor, Mich.