Noe’s Audience Is Watching From Afar

The television crew finished the shot of their subject tapping in a putt on the 11th green, picked up their gear and raced over to the 12th tee to get a good spot along the ropes for the ensuing drive.

Just another day in the life of a professional Tiger Woods watcher?

Hardly. And there was certainly no need to rush. Woods and the traveling circus that follows him was two holes ahead Thursday at Riviera Country Club during the first round of Nissan Open.

The few spectators watching this group--Stewart Cink, Shane Bertsch and Terry Noe--may have never heard of any of them, but the TV crew from the Korean cable channel recorded every swing Noe took.

Noe, who won the 1992 junior national championship in his native South Korea and the 1994 U.S. Junior Amateur, is a 19-year-old freshman at Long Beach State and will always be known as the last amateur player to beat Woods. He defeated golf’s--or is it the globe’s?--No. 1 phenom last summer in match play during the Western Amateur in Benton Harbor, Mich.

Having beaten Woods once, Noe’s goal is to beat him again. “To play on the PGA [Tour] is a dream,” he says. Noe, an amateur who qualified for the Nissan Open by shooting a 67 Monday at Western Hills Country Club, took some pretty swings toward that end Thursday and finished with a par 71.

“I was very nervous for the first few, well, probably the first nine holes,” said Noe, a Sunny Hills High graduate who was playing the tight Riviera layout for only the second time. His first round was Tuesday, after a geography test at Long Beach.

“That big, elevated first tee, it was like hell. I just touched the ball.”

He also hit the pin with a chip shot and then rolled in a three-foot putt for birdie. A nice start for a first PGA Tour event.

Knocking the ball close to the pin soon became a trend. He had only 10 putts on the front side and was two under at the turn. If his nerves finally settled at that point, he might want to start drinking espresso before embarking on the back nine.

Noe bogeyed Nos. 10, 11 and 12, three-putting both 11 and 12. And when he pushed his drive off the 13th tee into the right rough under a stand of eucalyptus trees, caddie John Hartman told him to, “stay positive,” as they walked off the tee.

Noe didn’t appear the least bit perturbed, however. He grabbed his seven iron and slipped a shot under a huge branch of a nearby tree and over the top of a distant one, then onto the green 140 yards away. He holed an 18-footer for birdie.

“We didn’t really get much of a look at the course on Tuesday, just kind of ran around right before dark,” said Hartman, a teaching pro at the Family Golf Center in Westminster who has been working with Noe the last couple of years. “We misread the putt at 11 and didn’t see the knob in the middle of the green on 12, but we’ll learn from that.

“This was a great round for the kid. It could very easily have been a 76 or 77.”

Noe, who had bogeyed the 14th when his five-foot putt slipped past the lip, sent his drive on the 447-yard par-four 15th into a tree and it dropped straight down into deep rough. The huge throng following Woods was pressed against the ropes of the 17th fairway only a couple yards away.

Had they bothered to turn their heads, a couple thousand people would have seen a remarkable shot. As it was, only the Korean media, Noe’s father, Hyung, and a handful of others were applauding after Noe drove a low shot under the tree and into a brisk wind that somehow carried over a bunker and onto the only edge of the green in his view.

A few more, who were gathered in the bleachers behind the green of the par-three 16th, were there to cheer as his curling 45-footer disappeared into the hole for birdie. And even more, sitting in the grass bowl behind the 18th hole, saw his second shot land six inches from the hole on the fly, only to skip to the back of the green.

He two-putted for par and 71.

“I haven’t played too much the last couple of months because of schoolwork; it’s much harder than high school,” said Noe, a two-time Times Orange County first-team pick. “But I had fun and it was a pretty good day. I’m happy.”

He’ll be happier if he makes the cut. And he wouldn’t mind ending up in Woods’ group. “I think I would play better with big-name players,” he said. “I like the challenge.”

Noe, Cink and Bertsch, who tee off at 12:41 today on No. 10, figure to draw a bigger crowd for the second round. Noe’s buddies from the Long Beach golf team are coming.

Maybe they’ll be the only ones, but when a course official asks them if they’re looking for Woods, they’ll just say Noe.