They Follow the Game With a Quiet Passion

Help. I am stuck in the jaws of Andy Gump.

I dropped in for a moment of relief while walking up the 10th fairway, but the metal latch that locks the door and keeps strangers from barging in and toppling this thing like a phone booth in a tornado is stuck.

And here I, uh, stand.

Watching Ernie Els and David Duval play the first round of the Nissan Open from a port-a-potty.

With danger everywhere.

“This Water Not For Drinking,” reads the sink.

“Flush For 3 Seconds By Pushing Pedal Down,” reads the commode.

Pedal? You pedal a bike, a sewing machine. You should not have to pedal a toilet.

What I really want to do on this early Thursday afternoon at Riviera is scream.

But I don’t want to infuriate the 4-foot man holding up the 8-foot sign reading “QUIET.”

It’s tough being a golf fan.

If you are one of thousands expected to flood Riviera this weekend at $20 a ticket to cheer the best field in this tournament’s history, you will understand.

It’s like being a baseball fan.

That is, if baseball fans had to park five miles away and catch a crowded shuttle bus to the game.

Then, once there, most of them were forced to watch standing up.

And unless somebody really did something spectacular, they couldn’t cheer.

And if a foul ball was hit in the stands, they had to step aside and let the players retrieve them.

And there were nothing but port-a-potties.

It’s tough being a golf fan.

You pay good money to attend an event where watching it requires as much physical activity as playing it.

And if you complain too much, somebody standing next to the green looking like Wilford Brimley has the right to publicly tell you to shut up.

Conversation Thursday between me and one of the guys with the “Quiet” signs.

Me: “So, everybody staying quiet?”

Him: “Mmmmmmm.”

Me: “I mean, no disturbances or anything?”

Him: “Ummmmmmm.”

Me: “Had to pull out that sign much?”

Him: “Hmmmmmmm.”

Understandably, golf fans take pride in the little things.

Like cursing.

“We really like following Steve Pate,” said Dan Douglass, a bakery-truck driver strolling along the 13th hole Thursday.

Because he went to UCLA? Because he is coming off his best financial year on the tour?

“Because he curses a lot,” Douglass said. “He missed one putt today, walked away, and went, ‘#@$#@$.’ Made it all worth it.”

Golf fans take pride in those little three-legged camouflage chairs you can buy, two for $9.43, at any sporting goods store.

The thing with camouflage chairs is, you plant them in front of the tee where you want to watch your favorite star, just to make sure nobody can block your view. Then you wait about six hours for him to show up.

“We love our new chairs,” said Michelle Mundy of Norwalk, planting in front of the ninth tee, waiting for David Duval, who was about three days away.

“They put my fanny to sleep,” Louise James said.

“Mother!” Mundy said.

“I can say what I want,” James said.

Golf fans are a brave, independent sort.

They come to a tournament knowing that they will never see a beginning, or an end, only a whole lot of middle.

For an hour Thursday, Keith Awtry and his two high school buddies from Valencia sat on the grass along the eighth hole watching some of that middle.

They saw five or six threesomes during that time. They never had a direct view of a tee shot or a putt. They never saw a winner or a loser.

“But we have this,’ said Keith cheerfully, holding up a little colorful bean bag.

It is assumed that they kicked it around during lulls in the action, in which case their legs must be exhausted.

To be a golf fan is to know that no matter how hard you try, you will never be in the right place at the right time.

“Happened all day,” said Jill Nunnally, a Mission Viejo housewife. “We’re standing at one hole when we heard a bunch of cheering at another hole across the way and we’re going, ‘Oh no. . . .’ ”

To be a golf fan is to know that no matter whom you talk to, they aren’t listening.

“Roll, roll, roll!” you will yell at a putt that promptly stops.

“Good job!” you will yell at player who promptly looks in the other direction.

On every tee box at every course in every golf tournament in America, three things always happen.

The player hits what looks like a perfect shot.

The fans erupt in wild cheering.

The player shakes his head and grimaces as if the crowd has no idea what it’s watching.

To be a golf fan is to know that you don’t watch the golfer tugging his shirt, or the caddie throwing grass, or the 300-pound produce executive smoking a cigar.

You watch the ball, and only the ball. If you don’t watch the ball from the moment it is hit, you will never see it.

“Took me a while to see it,” driver Douglass said. “You almost have to play. . . .”

No almost about it. To be a golf fan is to be a golfer. Nobody else is that crazy.

Based on conversations with several golfers in the gallery Thursday, the reasons are simple.

They come because they love golfers and want to see and learn from the ones they have watched on TV.

They come because they love golf courses, particularly when it is not taking 110 strokes to walk around them.

“You have to play the game to understand,” said Nick Price, who is among the leaders. “Otherwise, as a fan, you have no idea what is going on.”

What is going on more than anything else, Price said, is “closeness.”

“What other sport can you get six feet from your hero?” he said. “That’s the one thing we offer.”

Unlike most other fans, golf spectators show up for the pureness of the sport, which is why it’s a shame that they walk away with grass stains on their pants and blisters on their feet.

But there are blissful moments when they walk away with more.

After escaping the port-a-potty Thursday by brilliantly discovering another sign--”Open”--I stumbled upon one of those moments.

On the legendary sixth hole, Kazuhiko Hosokawa bounced his tee shot over the green. But sitting right there was Ray Estrada, a pharmaceutical salesman from Ontario.

The ball hit a drain cover, hit Estrada’s size-9 1/2 right shoe, and bounced back to within a couple of feet of the pin.

Hosokawa bowed, made the putt for a birdie two, and tossed his TourStage ball to Estrada.

Who promptly spoke for all golf fans when he was asked if he was going to take it home and display it.

“No,” he said. “I think I’ll take it home and putt with it.”

*

Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com