Birds-Eye View Helps at Pelican

It was only the fourth hole, so Richard Kim thought it was too soon to judge whether Pelican Hill was a spectator-friendly course. But by the seventh hole of the Hyundai Team Matches, Kim and his mother, Elizabeth, were ready to make a call.

Elizabeth Kim was able to reach the seventh tee only by hanging onto the back of her son’s fanny pack as she trudged up the hill from the sixth green.

“You saw her pooping out,” said an out-of-breath Richard Kim, of Fullerton. “I think I’m almost there too.”

Lee and Pug Esch didn’t have to wait seven holes. They were ready to proclaim Pelican Hill unfriendly to spectators by the second hole.

“It’s terrible,” Pug Esch said as she watched her daughter-in-law, Annika Sorenstam, putt from some 200 yards away. “When they had this in Palm Springs [at PGA West], it was a much friendlier spectator course.”

Tournament director Gary Pollard acknowledges Pelican Hill was not built with the fan in mind. Pollard said fans and players told him last year that the course needed to be more fan friendly. So this year he added shuttle service from No. 9 and No. 14 to help spectators.

“We made extra special efforts to make it more spectator friendly,” said Pollard, who also lowered ticket prices 40% and confined the tournament to the North course to take advantage of its parallel fairways on the back nine.

But for the Eschs, both in their mid-60s, it wasn’t the walking that bothered them.

“It’s a beautiful course,” Pug Esch said. “On the positive side, I get a lot of exercise. We walked 18 holes yesterday and after we were through, I made [Lee] take me shopping until 11 o’clock.”

But the long distances between the greens and tees began to wear down the Eschs after two days, and it also made things difficult for people trying to follow their favorite players. While the players jumped in golf carts after hitting their tee shots, the spectators huffed and puffed behind them, hoping to catch a glimpse of an approach shot.

All the huffing and puffing apparently took its toll on quite a few people. By the ninth hole, the small galleries had thinned considerably. Innae Choi was following the Tom Watson and Jack Nicklaus team, but she and her husband caught the shuttle back to the clubhouse after the front nine.

“It was such a beautiful course, and the views of the ocean are great,” Choi said. “But the holes are not very close and there are quite a few hills.”

The hills are not only tough to climb, they obstruct the viewing on some of the holes. On the sixth tee, the spectator must decide whether to watch the swing or the ball flight. Because of a cluster of bushes in the viewing area, it is impossible to see both.