Golf Shootout Draws Both Legends, Mortals : Charity: The Sherwood Country Club tournament is expected to raise about $1 million for cancer research and a facility for abused children.

Cool breaths of wind moved through the oaks as Martin Finfrock inched closer to the ice-slick green Friday to witness the march of legends--Arnold Palmer, Ray Floyd, Greg Norman.

“They’re bigger than life,” the 32-year-old Camarillo man said, eager to profess his awe.

Thousands of other golf lovers, including a couple who hail from the game’s birthplace in Scotland, gathered in the forests and the glens of the Sherwood Country Club to witness the sorcery of mortals in the Franklin Funds Shark Shootout.

The $1.1-million golf tournament, held annually in the exclusive hamlet of Lake Sherwood in the shadow of the Santa Monica Mountains near Thousand Oaks, is expected to raise about $1 million for charity from the pro-am and spectator fees. The funds are earmarked for the National Childhood Cancer Foundation and the recently completed Casa Pacifica, a Camarillo-area facility for abused children.

Mary Lipari, 27, of Thousand Oaks has attended each of the six Greg Norman-hosted shootouts--with an increasingly keen eye. A junior at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Lipari has been studying turf-grass management so she can enter her father’s golf-accessory business after graduation.

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Gazing about the eighth green as if it was hallowed ground, she said, “This is a great golf course.” Beneath her feet, she noted, was “blue grass . . . Kentucky blue grass.”

Far above the nearby ninth tee, a red-tailed hawk framed against the autumn sky gave out a sudden shriek when a ball came too close. Below, the great Arnold Palmer uncoiled from his swing amid oohs and aahs from still-loyal soldiers of his so-called Arnie’s Army.

“It’s nice when you get so close and see them, how good they really are,” Finfrock mused.

Sounding the plaint of golfers everywhere, Mike Orosco, 22, of Camarillo added, “You can’t know (how good they are) unless you play the game.”

Mike Seizemore does.

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Although his cowboy hat, beard and weathered features make him look more the prospector than the golfer, Seizemore has worked himself down to a 13 handicap. That is no mean feat for a man who has braved rattlesnakes and blistering heat to play on the moonscape terrain of Death Valley, where he lives and works as a welder.

“We’ve got no grass on our course,” said Seizemore, 39, his eyes casting about a land rich in greenery--green oaks, green grass, green bushes dusted with lime-green blossoms. “We’ve only got grass on the tee boxes and on the greens.”

From an entirely different reach of the world was Donald MacNiven, 71, a Scotsman who spends half the year in Belfast, Ireland, and the other in California.

“Golf is a way of life,” MacNiven declared. “It’s not just a sport.”

Not far away, Billie Cornell, 41, of the High Sierra town of Truckee, was bracing her husband’s wheelchair as he backed down a steep cart path after watching Palmer’s foursome.

Although he no longer plays the game, golf has special significance to Bruce Cornell, 42, who was paralyzed from the waist down in 1985 after being hit by a truck at a construction site in San Diego.

“He played the day before the accident,” his wife said.

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Cornell, who skies regularly and has participated in several wheelchair marathons, added, “The last hole I played, I birdied.”

Standing beneath a large oak, Bob Goldwasser told of playing with Nick Price and hockey star Wayne Gretsky in the pro-am event Thursday.

“I’d thought that it’d be nerve-racking, but it wasn’t. The pros were real nice,” said Goldwasser, 55, of St. Louis.

His wife, Marilyn, 54, told how Gretsky scrambled up a hill off the 13th hole to show them a weedy lot where he intends to build a home. “He was real excited too,” she said.

The tournament, which began Wednesday and concludes Sunday, drew about 4,000 spectators Friday, media representative Steve Brener estimated. Tickets were $50 Friday and will be $60 today and Sunday, he said.