Helping Youth Is Par for the Course

Unleashing a swing that whistles with controlled violence, the big man sends the golf ball zinging toward a far corner of the Van Nuys driving range like a tiny, white missile.

The little man nods in approval. “Geeeeezz!” he reacts, watching the ball sail over the chain-link fence 350 yards away.

The big man turns, giving him the studied look of a coach. Or doting dad.

“OK son, now you try it,” says golf pro Gregg Sawaya. “Show me some style.”

For more than an hour, the little man--wearing a gold chain, baggy shorts and glittering, street-smart earring--takes his cuts at the ball, sometimes spraying shots this way and that, but mostly straight down the middle.

One day each week, an 11-year-old boy named Jason gets to pretend that he still has a father figure in his life, someone who’s willing to take time to show him such things as playing golf, who genuinely wants to know how he’s doing in school or simply just what’s on his mind.

Jason lost that years ago when he became a ward of the court, placed in a Shadow Hills group home with other adolescents who were abused at home and often rebelled by joining gangs or experimenting with drugs.

Thanks to a program sponsored by the Van Nuys Rotary Club and the Human Services Network, which runs several group homes in the San Fernando Valley, youths from troubled families are getting some of their childhood back.

Last Thursday, 18 boys gathered at the Van Nuys Golf Course, tutored one on one in the mechanics of golf by Rotary Club members--tire salesmen, roofers, Realtors and electricians with children of their own, working professionals who take an afternoon off every few months to give something back to luckless kids in their community.

“These boys are spending time with someone who isn’t being paid to take care of them like every other adult in their lives,” says Judi Rose, community relations director for the Human Services Network, a private agency.

“These kids are just having a good time with adults, something they don’t get much chance to do.”

Last year, Rose--herself a Rotarian--envisioned a way to get middle-aged volunteers together with youths hailing from a thinner social fabric. All she had to do was mention golf and they all came running, big men and little.

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For the boys, many of them former gangbangers, it’s like going from drive-by shootings to the driving range.

Indeed, the range resembles some chance meeting of rapper Ice-T and television’s Mr. Rogers. Boys with shaved heads or ponytails and baggy jeans stand hip to hip with men sporting military haircuts, with plastic pen holders in their shirt pockets.

“Boom!” yells young Josh as he sends a ball into the fairway.

A teen named Angel never imagined himself wielding a golf club.

“I always thought golf was for old people,” he says. “But now that I’ve tried it, I think it’s pretty cool. It’s like baseball, only you swing down, not across.”

Sawaya joined the group after a Rotarian to whom he was giving lessons invited him.

What he found were boys sheltered in more ways than one. At his first of four seminars, Sawaya asked how many kids had ever played baseball. Only three of 25 raised their hands.

“I thought I’d have to deal with a bunch of kids throwing clubs and getting angry,” he says. “But what I saw was a group of gentlemen who came to have fun. They take turns. They have little competitions. They are truly amazing.”

At that first seminar, Sawaya worked with one youth with a natural swing who paid attention to his every word. “I couldn’t stay away from him,” he says.

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The meeting produced a weekly lesson between the 35-year-old Sawaya and Jason, the boy with the slicked-back hair.

Big man and little man, teacher and student.

Sawaya says the sudden popularity of professional golf freshman Tiger Woods--who is of African American, Chinese, Thai, American Indian and white descent--has impressed minority youths, fascinated to see someone like themselves make it in a sport they hadn’t given much thought to. But the lanky Studio City resident also knows it’s an unlikely pairing, that this aristocratic game has rarely, if ever, reached out to minority kids.

“Golf discriminates,” Sawaya says. “As someone who’s Jewish, I know that there are still some clubs in this country where I can’t play. Both Jason and I have uphill battles.”

Now Jason has a new role model.

“He thinks Gregg is God,” says counselor Terry Hatter.

Not long ago, Jason penned Sawaya a card that read: “I love you just like you are my Dad. . . . I wish every night that you will accept me. I love you a lot, so much that sometimes I feel like crying.”

The teacher has set up rules for the student: No drugs. No sleeping in class. And Jason must do well in school. So far, so good--and Jason brought his report card recently to prove it.

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At one lesson, the two hugged when they met. When Jason swings, Sawaya crouches nearby, hands on his knees, concentrating like a coach. When it’s a good shot, they high-five.

Not long ago, Sawaya began bringing Jason his old golf shirts, which are too big but make Jason feel like a golfer. He got him a glove and some balls. Even a new set of clubs donated by a manufacturer he used to work for.

But the big man is a big thinker. Sawaya wants to turn the occasional group seminars into a full-fledged summer camp to teach golf to poor Valley youths. He’s putting the word out to his adult students and others in the community that he has a good use for their old clubs, that old bag and those golf balls--and their spare time. Give them to kids with dreams of being the next Tiger Woods.

The other day, he tried to contact Woods himself to ask him to appear at the seminar and give his students an emotional boost. Woods was out of town, but Sawaya will keep trying. He also wants to one day get the boys off the range and onto the golf course, perhaps in a tournament with Los Angeles police--moving the battle between cops and these kids to a new playing field.

He also wants to start a golf scholarship for minority youngsters.

“I’m married to this game,” he says. “I love it. And kids like Jason can love it, too.”

In the meantime, as he schools Jason in both golf and life, Sawaya is preparing to fulfill a dream of his own. Next year, the teaching pro wants to take a shot at qualifying for the Los Angeles Open on the PGA Tour, to play side by side with his heroes.

“We gotta work hard in the next few months,” he tells Jason. “In school and on the course.”

Nodding his head, the wide-eyed boy will do whatever his teacher says. “Gregg’s my favorite golfer of all time,” he says.

“Tiger’s good, but he’s only No. 2.”