1995 / 77th PGA RIVIERA : It’s Where Tradition Means Fine Showers : Golf: Riviera’s locker room may not be state of the art, but the cleanest players love it.

It looks like an army barracks and smells like one too.

Hey, aren’t those Ben Hogan’s socks from the 1950 L.A. Open?

The carpet doesn’t quite match the decor, which could be described as early YMCA, and you fear a 6.2 on the Richter scale might reduce the brown-beamed rafters to rubble.

It has been locker room to the rich and famous since the 1920s but--rest assured--Robin Leach never had a caviar dream here.

The men’s locker room at Riviera Country Club has been called many things.

Just don’t call it old.

“This is called tradition,” Wardell Gil says proudly.

And so is Gil, Riviera’s locker room manager for more than 30 years.

Like the place itself, Gil, 70, has aged gracefully.

Is it a good job?

As Gil mans his post inside, Ben Crenshaw passes by. “Hi ya, Gil,” he says.

You think you get chummy with Crenshaw flipping burgers?

Best move Gil ever made was talking his way out of the kitchen at Riviera.

“I didn’t like the confinement,” he says of his days as a cook. “I like being around people. I like to talk.”

He got wind of a job opening in the locker room in the early 1960s and grabbed it.

“When I took over, the manager said if he didn’t get any complaints, I’d never hear from him,” Gil says during a break at this week’s PGA Championship, where he and his staff are catering to the world’s top golfers. “I’ll tell you something. I haven’t heard anything from him.”

Gil’s mission is to make club members and touring pros feel at home. Clean their shoes, change their spikes, pass out towels and direct them to what Crenshaw and Lee Trevino have called the best showers on the PGA Tour.

“We have super shower heads,” Gil says. “I mean, really .”

To Gil, no news is good news.

“I make sure the members are happy, make sure everything is in order, whatever they need, we accommodate them.”

During the L.A. Open, Gil is in charge of making locker assignments to touring players.

“Certain members have favorite pros, and they want them in their locker,” Gil says.

Mark Brooks, for example, hooks his shirts in member Guy McElwaine’s stall. Brooks leaves thank-you notes in marking pen inside the door panel.

Corey Pavin is usually member Rudy Durand’s locker buddy.

This week, however, the PGA took over the lockers. Still, Gil says, member Frank Browning pulled some strings so that Fred Couples, as is the custom, could use his stall.

The most famous locker at Riviera, of course, belongs to club member O.J. Simpson.

Simpson has a corner stall, No. 733, but Gil long ago removed Simpson’s name plate.

Visiting journalists seeking out Simpson’s stall this week are on their own.

“I knew him as well as any other member,” Gil says of Simpson.

Gil says he was one of the last people to speak to Simpson when he left Riviera on June 12, 1994.

Simpson played a round of golf that morning and then his usual game of gin in the afternoon.

“I talked to him the night it [the murders] happened,” Gil says. “He told me when he came in, he said, ‘Gil, I’m going home to the couch, my knees are hurting,’ and I said, ‘You going to be a couch potato like the rest of us?’ and he said, ‘Yeah.’ ”

Gil remembers his thoughts after learning Simpson would be charged with the murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman.

“The first thing I said was, ‘Well, he didn’t do it.’ . . . I don’t have an opinion now.”

It has been quite a celebrity ride for Gil, who has mingled with the stars for three decades.

“Dean Martin used to come in singing, and go out singing,” Gil recalls.

Gil knew nothing about golf when he moved west in 1953 from Lake Charles, La.

But how could you work at Riviera and not play?

Though he never worked his handicap below 10, Gil still plays three times a week and takes advantage of his surroundings.

“I’ve played golf 35, 40 years, and I don’t ever remember spending anything on anything.”

Gil has no plans to retire.

Retire to what?

“I couldn’t think of a better place to work,” Gil says. “It’s not the club, it’s the people that have kept me here all these years.”

And the showers.