77TH PGA CHAMPIONSHIP: RIVIERA : Lots of Bogeys, No More Bogie : Despite a Grand Tradition, Riviera Isn’t Exactly a Hollywood Hangout These Days

From Pickford to Pavin, Hepburn to Hogan, Erroll to O.J., the Riviera Country Club has catered to swingers, hobnobbers and tabloid tattlers for almost 70 years now.

It has passed every test of time, recovered from its Hollywood hangovers, withstood flood waters, kikuyu grass and graphite shafts.

Riviera, with all its dated dignity, is eager to prove it is just as worthy of holding the 1995 PGA Championship as it was in 1948 when it was awarded the first U.S. Open west of the Mississippi.

“It’s a big, rough, tough course . . . with makeup,” says Bob Williams, Riviera’s oldest member at 81.

Riviera’s classic, oversized Spanish-style look has remained virtually unchanged in seven decades. In the ornate main lobby, spider-webbed earthquake cracks splinter the fireplace, over which hangs a portrait of Ben Hogan, who played his last competitive round at Riviera in 1950.

Riviera has remained true to the vision of architect George C. Thomas, to ensure that a foursome today will experience much the same as the first one did on June 24, 1927, after the course was completed at a cost of $243,827.63.

The elevated, knee-knocking first tee still leaves a lump in the best players’ throats. The fourth hole has fought to live up to Ben Hogan’s boast of it being “the greatest par-three hole in America.”

Players continue to speak of the par-four 10th with reverence, while No. 18 remains a classic finishing hole, “a great place for a picnic,” Times columnist Jim Murray once wrote, “also a great place for a bogey.”

Club pro Mike Miller compares Thomas’ work at Riviera to the best work of the masters.

“Should we touch up a Rembrandt?” he asks. “I don’t think we touch anything done by Monet.”

Yet, frankly, Riviera isn’t the celebrity club it used to be. Most of the bigwigs packed their bags and moved to the plusher confines of Bel-Air Country Club.

Dean Martin, a star who embodied the old Riviera, a dry-martini crooner who used to leave blank checks behind to square his links losses, has not been seen at Riviera since his son died in a plane crash eight years ago.

James Garner, maybe the best-ever celebrity golfer at Riviera, is a Bel-Air man now.

Peter Falk and his 13-handicap remain faithful, but the course is mainly grazed now by executives and movie moguls.

Once, Elizabeth Taylor and her mother leased one of Riviera’s 36 adjoining hotel rooms.

W.C. Fields roamed the grounds as one of the original “Divot Diggers.”

Humphrey Bogart liked to lean against a sycamore tree on the 12th hole, in a trench coat, and sip his favorite beverage.

You can still come to Riviera and feel sea breezes whipping up the Pacific Palisades corridor, but its most guarded secrets are locked in the walls.

“Half of coming to a place like this is feeling the tradition,” Riviera historian Geoff Shackelford said.

Riviera’s hold on celebrity status is tenuous, linked to a morning round of golf played on June 12, 1994, by club member O.J. Simpson.

Simpson played perhaps his last round of golf at Riviera that morning with some of the buddies later mentioned in the so-called Simpson suicide note read on television by attorney/friend Robert Kardashian.

“People don’t talk about it here at all,” Shackelford says of the Simpson case. “Not at all. Everyone is waiting to see.”

There are reports Simpson and playing partner Craig Baumgarten, a Hollywood producer, got into a heated argument on the par-five, 463-yard second hole.

This would not have been a first. The hole, played as a par four in professional tournaments, was ranked in 1990 by PGA of America as the toughest No. 2 in America.

Mitch Mesko, Baumgarten’s caddy that day, went on the television tabloid show, “A Current Affair,” and claimed an argument ensued after Simpson distracted Baumgarten on his backswing off the tee.

Simpson was reportedly famous for this.

Alan Austin, playing in the group that day, corroborated the story in a recent interview with Golf Digest.

Austin remembered that O.J. confronted Baumgarten on the fairway.

“O.J. said, ‘What’s with this guy?’ ” Austin told Golf Digest.

And then, reportedly: “‘Craig, if I hear another world from you, I’m going to deck your . . . right here on the golf course.’ He must have said it very believably, because Craig turned white and backed off.”

Riviera is reserving judgment on Simpson.

“We’re very leery of the possible taint,” says Williams, a former Hollywood publicist and Riviera member since 1948. “I can’t say we’ve been tainted, because this could happen at any club. But I can say the regulars who played with him are now very sad. They’re really unhappy about what happened.”

The Simpson saga is the biggest celebrity story to hit Riviera, dwarfing the antics of swashbuckler Erroll Flynn in the 1940s.

Flynn’s most infamous escapade is recounted in the new book, “The Riviera Country Club, a Definitive History,” researched and written by Shackelford.

At a party held in the Main Ballroom, Flynn tried to make time with a woman who turned out to be the wife of a security guard.

When the guard, an off-duty police officer, flashed Flynn his badge, Flynn grabbed it from the guard’s hand and put it in his own pocket.

Flynn was arrested and hauled off to jail.

The actor later filed a $1-million wrongful arrest suit against Riviera, claiming his reputation had been damaged, to which a Riviera attorney responded: “How on earth can you damage his reputation?”

Not all the memorable moments at Riviera took place off the course.

Of the many golf highlights, two stand out, both involving Ben Hogan and Sam Snead.

The 1950 comeback of Hogan to competitive golf after a near-fatal auto accident remains one of sport’s more enduring stories.

Hogan and Riviera were hinged at the hip. After he had won two L.A. Opens and the U.S. Open at Riviera in a span of 18 months in 1947 and ‘48, the club became known as “Hogan’s Alley.”

But in February 1949, while driving home to Fort Worth, Hogan was critically injured in a crash. When blood clots developed in his legs, doctors weren’t sure if Hogan would walk again.

He would do more than that.

To prepare himself for the 1950 L.A. Open, Hogan soaked his legs each morning and bound them in bandages. Terrible weather plagued Hogan in the tournament but, ultimately, that worked to his advantage.

Jerry Barber, out early in the third round, had built a commanding lead with a 73 and headed to the clubhouse as the weather worsened.

Hogan, his legs aching, approached a flooded barranca on the 11th fairway and announced he was unable to negotiate the treacherous crossing.

“He refused to cross the bridge,” remembers Williams, who followed Hogan’s every step that weekend.

Tournament officials canceled the round, nullifying Barber’s score. The third round was replayed, allowing Hogan to close in and trail by two strokes entering play the final day.

What is often forgotten about Hogan’s comeback is that he lost the 1950 L.A. Open.

Sam Snead fired birdies on Nos. 17 and 18 to tie Hogan and force a one-round playoff, which Snead won.

Twenty-four years later, at 61, Snead was at it again, as he made an improbable run at the 1974 L.A. Open championship.

After a birdie on 17 in the final round, Snead trailed leader Dave Stockton by one shot heading into the final hole.

Standing at the par-four 18th tee with Stockton, Snead casually remarked: “You know, in 1950 I birdied the last two holes here to tie Hogan.”

Stockton was unnerved, thinking Snead was trying to psych him out.

It almost worked.

Stockton hooked his tee shot left into the thick kikuyu.

It appeared an impossible lie, the ball embedded on a slope 244 yards from the pin, but Stockton somehow snaked a three-wood that rolled 12 feet from the pin and he won by two strokes.

“Probably the greatest shot ever made at Riviera,” Shackelford said, standing on the spot where Stockton took aim.

A plaque was placed in Stockton’s honor at the point of his shot, but it was stolen soon after and remained missing for years.

Recently, the plaque just as mysteriously reappeared. Stockton proudly showed Riviera officials the exact spot where he struck his three-wood.

Players in this year’s PGA should hope they never shoot close enough to read the inscription: “244 Yards: Dave Stockton’s Famous 3 Wood Shot to win ’74 Glen Campbell L.A. Open.”

Snead always maintained he was not trying to show up Stockton. Snead claims he thought John Mahaffey, not Stockton, was leading by one shot heading into 18.

Recently reminded of Snead’s explanation of 1974, Stockton replied: “Snead’s full of it.”