THE NEXT BEST

The topic of conversation is, of course, golf.

Any time Ron Won, Brian Sinay and Nico Bollini get together, there really isn’t much else to talk about.

Oh, sure, the subject might switch to cars or girls or music or whatever else high school boys talk about these days. But only momentarily.

There are always plenty of golf stories to tell.

Play as much as they do, and that’s what happens. Theirs is a world consumed by the sport. The popular phrase found on bumper stickers and T-shirts “Golf is Life” does not apply to players such as these.

For them, life is golf.

They are among a generation of golfers riding the wake of Tiger Woods, who put junior golf on the map.

Won and Sinay, both from Irvine, and Bollini, of Yorba Linda, are among the nation’s elite boys in their age group. Candie Kung of Fountain Valley and Angela Rho of Fullerton are among the top girls.

Theirs is a generation flooding golf courses and driving ranges across the nation, dreaming of success. But players like Kung, Won, Bollini, Rho and Sinay have managed to separate themselves from the pack and achieve it.

All are nationally ranked. Kung is the No. 1 girl and Rho is No. 17. Won is ranked No. 10 while Bollini is 33rd and Sinay is 130th.

A borderline-obsessive work ethic, an admirable devotion and a ruthless determination have enabled them to rise above a playing field that has seen an enormous increase of players and sharp rise in quality of play.

But though hard work may be the key ingredient, much more goes into developing into a championship-level golfer. Among them, is the willingness to be immersed into a world where golf is everything, leaving little room for anything else.

“My life is sleeping, eating, studying and playing golf,” said Sinay, a junior at University High who won the Southern Section individual title as a freshman.

“Mostly playing golf, though. I don’t know how anyone could be good if it wasn’t. You have to do that to keep up. If you don’t, you’re not going to be good.”

For top-level players, playing and practicing are only the beginning.

Sinay admits to always having a club handy at home, just in case he comes up with a new swing thought. Kung likes to scour the golf Internet sites, looking for information on her competitors and favorite professional players.

Bollini, who says the magical run by Jack Nicklaus in the 1986 Masters is both inspirational and motivational, watches a videotape copy of the tournament on a regular basis, and Rho says she reads about golf as much as she can.

“There are certain ingredients that those kids have, and I don’t know what they are,” said Kevin Ostroske, director of junior golf for the Southern California PGA. “They have the ability to put things aside after school, be energized and motivated to hit balls, then come home and read the rule book.”

Those intangible ingredients are easily explained by the golfers.

Sinay says patience is key.

“Wait for the good shot--it’ll come,” he said. “If I’m two over or three over, I can stay patient, I can wait it out. For the most part, if you stay patient, you can save two or three strokes every round.”

Bollini points to confidence.

“It is the most important thing,” he said. “If you don’t believe in yourself, then don’t bother playing.”

Whatever the mental aspects, they are translating to a skyrocketing level of talent among today’s junior players. Course records throughout Southern California are getting lower and so are the ages of the players setting them.

Last summer, for example, high school players set men’s and women’s course records at Coto de Caza.

Henry Liaw, then 12, shot 58 at Alhambra Municipal Golf Course. Kung shot a women’s course record 65 at the SCGA Members Club in the CIF/SCGA championships.

When John Ray Leary of Culver City, 17, set the course record at Coto De Caza last summer, it lasted a day. John Lepak of La Habra Heights, also 17, broke it in the same tournament.

“There are some unbelievable scores out there,” Won said. “It’s like, jeez, records aren’t supposed to be broken that fast. They’re supposed to last a little longer.”

Winning scores at tournaments across the nation are getting lower and lower, causing concern among even the top players.

“When I first started out, the winning scores were in the 80s,” Rho said. “Now you have to shoot even par. At national-level tournaments you have to shoot under par.”

Steven Hamblin, executive director of the American Junior Golf Assn., recalls a mother calling to complain after a tournament last summer when she noticed her son’s name omitted from the top 20 scores. Her son shot par.

“I told her even par is tied for 39th right now,” Hamblin said.

He said the top scores aren’t necessarily lower than the scores Woods and Phil Mickelson shot during their junior careers, but that there are just more players shooting those scores.

“Guys like Tiger and Phil shot a few low numbers in their time,” Hamblin said. “But the actual depth of the numbers has increased. I remember when you could count about 20 places down the number of players who shot 75 or better. Now that might not make the cut.”

The improved quality of play has only served to fuel the competitive spirits of the top players. It gives them motivation to practice harder and longer to maintain their level of play.

“I just look at it and say now I have to work harder to keep up,” Won said. “I try to take it as a positive. If I let it frustrate me, it will only bring me down.”

It might be a stretch, but some players believe superstition might also have something to do with the improved play.

Don’t laugh, Rho has several. So does Won.

Rho prays for relaxation before each round and has a Mickey Mouse head cover that brings her luck.

But the butterfly pin on her bag carries more significance than anything else.

Well on her way to shooting over 80 in a tournament a few years ago, a butterfly landed on Rho’s bag.

She observed it for a moment, watched as it fluttered off. She then birdied the last five holes and shoot even par.

“Now any time I see one it helps turn my round around,” she said.

Won won’t use No. 4 balls, a superstition learned from his Korean-immigrant parents. Four is an unlucky number in Korea. He also believes his Tweety Bird head cover helps him hit his driver longer and he will not cut his hair or his fingernails the day before a tournament.

“Sometimes it’s kind of disgusting,” he said. “Sometimes tournaments are back to back and I don’t want to cut my nails because in big tournaments you don’t want that in your mind.”

Sinay doesn’t have any superstitions, but refuses to dismiss them as meaningless.

“This game is so mental that if you think it helps, it probably does,” he said.

OK, those things don’t have much to do with playing golf at a high level, but practice does. Not just practice, but putting the rest of your life on hold for the good of your golf game.

“I don’t really have too big of a social life,” said Won, a senior at University High. “I try to go out with friends, but I just don’t have the time.”

Won, who has accepted a golf scholarship to Stanford, said his life is 50% golf and 50% everything else.

Kung, headed to USC on a scholarship, maintains a rigorous practice schedule. Three hours a day she goes to the driving range trying to hit different targets with different clubs.

Afterward, a quick trip to the putting green, where she will line up from five feet and try to make 10 in a row. If she does, she’s done. If not, she keeps going until all 10 find the bottom of the cup.

Well, almost.

“Sometimes I cheat,” Kung said. “I don’t like putting.”

Bollini, a Servite sophomore, subscribes to a theory put forth by golf legend Ben Hogan and carries a small piece of paper in his wallet to remind him of it: “There isn’t enough daylight in any day to practice all the shots you need to practice.”

“You have to want it to succeed and you have to give up a lot to succeed in it,” Bollini said. “You have to put in the time and effort. If you are sitting at home and a girl calls you up what do you do? The good golfers are separated by the ones who chose practice over the ones who chose the girl.”

It’s tough to chose practice over friends, especially for teenagers.

But Rho, a Sonora High junior, says sometimes hitting golf balls until her hands hurt actually appeals more than social outings.

“I really have fun doing it and that makes it easy,” she said. “Yeah, I missed out on some things, but it’s not so bad that I’m going to look back on it and regret anything.”

But some say that the biggest factor that separates the top players from the others is something that cannot be practiced or taught. It has to already be there.

“They just love the game and have such a passion for it that going to work at it and making the sacrifices really isn’t,” Hamblin said. “To them, it’s fun.”

Fun because of the friendships they have developed through the sport.

Fun because of the travel opportunities they get, playing courses that the pros play and those most golfers only read about or see on television.

But mostly fun because of the conversations they get to have.

“Yeah, we usually talk about golf,” Won said. “But not like you would think. Usually we brag about how bad we played. Like the time we missed a two-footer to lose. Nobody brags about winning.”

Nobody has to.