Flight-Tested Angel Set to Take Off : Golf: After three City titles, Granada Hills ace will ascend to the next level at Arizona State.

The bag was beat up, the golf balls were well-worn. The clubs were an assortment of unmatched leftovers from here, there and who-knows-where.

Nonetheless, it was obvious the kid had an affinity for the game, even if he hadn’t quite grown into his oddball equipment, some of which was bigger than he was.

“I had to choke up on an old man’s three-wood almost to the metal,” Darren Angel said. “It was too much club for a 10-year-old.”

Nowadays, Angel has too much game for an 18-year-old. He’s clubbed every junior in sight.

Angel, three-time City Section champion and one of the nation’s most recruited players, jumped on the scene in his early teens when he began piling up tournament victories and strafing his pee-wee peers.

He’s bushwhacked his elders, too.

Angel was 13 when he first beat his father, Dennis, a schoolteacher and a Pacific 10 Conference football official. Darren was rumbling down the tracks like the proverbial runaway train, albeit at HO scale at the time.

“I knew it was eventually going to happen,” Dennis said. “He just kept getting better.”

No biggie? Dad’s a scratch player.

Angel’s high school career ends today at the CIF-Southern California Golf Assn. Championship at Bernardo Heights Country Club in San Diego. In the fall, he starts at Arizona State, one of the NCAA’s best programs.

No more big fish in a small pond. No more whipping guys simply by showing up. No more . . . is fine by Angel.

“I’d start now if I could,” he said. “I would have started when I signed my letter of intent. I’ve done all this stuff. Time for something new.”

At Arizona State, Angel can tap into the minds of former Sun Devil standouts Phil Mickelson and Tom Purtzer, PGA Tour pros who live in the area. The program has its own championship golf course, a private video-taping facility, apartments for team members and more available equipment than most pro shops. Angel can reinvent himself if he feels the urge.

To look like a golfer, for instance.

He doesn’t look the part. At 6 feet, 200 pounds, he lacks the physical attributes of the sport’s svelte, suntanned blonds that Lee Trevino likes to call “flat-bellies,” the guys with stomach muscles that look like a corrugated tin roof.

“Look at him and you’d think he sits on the couch eating potato chips all day,” said Brian Vranesh, a teammate. “Or that he plays football.”

Not too far off. Angel, like most kids, tried several sports in elementary school.

He was a good basketball player, especially since he was already close to 6 feet tall in junior high. There were a few bread-and-butter deficiencies, though. By his own description, Angel was “too slow and couldn’t jump.”

Besides, Angel likes being master of his own fate.

“I started to like playing as an individual, not having to count on anybody,” he said.

“If I mess up, I lose. Nobody else struck out in the bottom of the ninth to lose it for me.”

When he was 13, Angel weighed opportunities to play in junior golf tournaments or travel with an age-group all-star basketball team. By then, he realized he wasn’t going to have another growth spurt, so he bagged everything but golf.

“Looking at things realistically, there’s not a lot of demand for 6-foot white-dude power forwards,” Angel said.

Power hitters were another matter entirely. Angel’s length off the tee, by any conscionable standard, is borderline preposterous. He uses a metal driver with a double-stiff graphite shaft that’s so inflexible, Caltrans could use it as rebar.

Off the tee, Angel makes competitors look like, well, schoolboys.

During the City finals last month, Angel shot a three-under-par 68 in the second round at Rancho Park Golf Course, routinely driving the ball 75 yards beyond the hapless players in his foursome. Life’s not real tough when you’ve got a wedge in your hand and everybody else is hit ting a five-iron.

Angel’s longer than Beelzebub, bub. Three hundred yards and a cloud of dust.

“Darren’s so long, most places are pitch-n-putt courses for him,” said Scott Golditch, a freshman at Cal who was beaten last year by Angel in the City finals.

No course has been tamed by Angel more often than Knollwood Golf Course in Granada Hills, his home track in high school. Last year, he shot a nine-under 63 in a high school match to set a course record.

And it was no fluke--Angel did it again this spring. Vranesh, playing in the same foursome the second time around, could scarcely believe his eyes.

“Tell you what, he could have been in the 50s,” Vranesh said. “‘It could have been an all-time record or something. He could very easily have shaved another four or five shots, no problem.”

This final snapshot to illustrate that Angel can bruise balata with the best of them: The 11th hole at Knollwood is a 476-yard, uphill par 5. Last week, Angel reached the green with a driver and a nine-iron.

For Angel, there’s more where that came from, a sobering thought.

“I’ve always been able to out-hit everybody,” Angel said. “I could swing a lot harder if I want to.”

Golf’s full of big knocks, guys who grip and rip, slash and gnash. Plenty of the game’s legendary big hitters had incendiary tempers, though.

Angel’s no mad bomber. Not even close.

“I don’t know how he can hit a bad shot, maybe say one cuss word under his breath to himself, then go hit another shot,” Vranesh said. “It’s hard to tell how he’s playing by the way he acts.”

In fact, it’s hard to detect a pulse. If there’s ever been a more even-tempered junior player of Angel’s caliber, none springs to mind.

“Darren’s probably as low-key as I’ve ever seen,” said Randy Lein, the Arizona State men’s golf coach. “He learned at an early age that playing within yourself is important and that you can’t get everything back in one shot.”

Angel describes his demeanor as “Kick-back as it gets.” He is mature beyond his years.

“I don’t think I’ve ever thrown a club or ever broken one in anger,” Angel said. “I can’t remember ever getting that mad. It’s not the club’s fault.”

Some players look at things with a do-or-die mentality. For Angel, it’s more like do-or-don’t, then deal with it.

“It’s not life or death,” he said. “I see guys get . . . all the time. When I see somebody going off, there’s no way they’re going to come back on the next hole and shoot a good score. They’re done.”

Vranesh, usually Angel’s playing partner, gets white-knuckle angry all the time. He can heave a golf ball like a laser beam and nail his bag from about 100 yards. Imagine the contrast.

“I don’t know how he does it,” Vranesh said. “Maybe it’s because he has the ability to always hit the next shot to within about two feet.”

And Angel’s humble, too.

“Walk into my room or anybody else’s on the team and every trophy we’ve ever won is up on the shelf or wherever,” Vranesh said. “Darren has maybe two or three trophies or plaques up in his whole room. Of course, they’re pretty damn good trophies.

“He doesn’t flaunt it or showboat.”

What a wasted opportunity. Angel could get up with the roosters, start crowing, and not finish a list of his impressive credentials until well past sundown. A sampling:

* According to Joe White, Granada Hills’ golf coach of 30 years, Angel is the only player to win three consecutive City individual titles.

* Selected by the American Junior Golf Assn.--the nation’s most prestigious junior organization--as a two-time All-American. Angel has another summer of AJGA eligibility remaining.

* Averaged 68 this season in high school competition.

* Shot par or better in all but three matches over the past two high school seasons. Has only one over-par round as a senior.

* Occasionally defeated renowned guys such as Tiger Woods and Robert Floyd in national junior events.

* Claimed course record from white tees at the difficult Wood Ranch Golf Club in Simi Valley with a nine-under 63.

Somehow, he remains remarkably unaffected, perhaps because he’s seen boorish behavior from others.

“Not everyone has to like me, but I don’t want to have the reputation as someone who’s arrogant,” he said. “I hate people who act like that and wouldn’t ever want anybody to think of me that way.”

At the City final, the mother of individual runner-up Greg Goodfried was the scorekeeper in Angel’s foursome. Could have made for an uncomfortable situation, since Angel was in the midst of obliterating her son’s four-shot lead.

Said Nancy Goodfried: “He was a perfect gentleman. As good as he is and he was as nice as you could possibly imagine.”

Make no mistake, though, Angel knows he can play the game with almost anybody.

Told it might take a 70 or better to catch Goodfried in the second round at the City tournament, Angel said, serious as a sidehill three-footer, “So?”

So . . . he shot a 68 to win with ease, then said, “Now you can see why I wasn’t that worried about it.”

The next frontier is golf at Arizona State. Whether it’s the final frontier, who knows, but Angel aspires to go all the way.

“College is like double-A ball, the Nike Tour is like triple-A and the PGA is the major leagues,” Angel said. “At each step, the play is that much better. Right now, this is nothing. I don’t know what it takes to play like [college standouts and pros] play.”

Acclimation might not take long.

“He’ll probably make the jump to this level very quickly,” Lein said.

So it’s finally leap year, when Angel makes the bound to college. Today marks Angel’s last high school event. In a few weeks he’ll fire up the family car and execute the long drive--what else?--to Tempe.

The rear-view mirror won’t get much use. The highway’s wide open and so are the fairways.

Angel becomes a ‘Devil.

“I’m ready to get the hell out of here,” he said. “I’ve had enough of high school. It was fun and I’m almost done.

“One more tournament, then it’s on to the big stuff. I don’t know how I’ll do, but I can’t wait to find out.”