Links to the Future

The city’s first golf training center for young people opened Monday to the delight of many area children aspiring to be the next Tiger Woods or just wanting to have a good time.

The Tregnan Golf Academy in Griffith Park awed golf aficionados, both young and old, with its 10 acres of beautifully trimmed greens, spacious driving ranges and a dazzling view of the Los Angeles skyline.

“The opening of the Tregnan Golf Academy brings to fruition the dream of making golf a sport that is available to all young people, especially inner-city youth,” said Mayor Richard Riordan.

Golf has given Joi Hart, 17, an escape from the violence that plagues her South-Central neighborhood.

“It is pretty rough out here, but I manage to deal with it,” she said. “That’s why I go to the golf course. It is my getaway from all the violence.”

The 10-acre hilltop facility includes a 1,500-square-foot learning center with classrooms and audiovisual equipment, a 15-stall driving range, two putting and chipping areas and three golf practice holes.

It’s quite a change from the dirty golf course and graffiti-ridden clubhouse that once had the same address, the Coolidge Golf Course. It was shut down 18 years ago.

The academy facility, built with a $900,000 donation from the Santa Monica-based American Golf Inc., will be operated, staffed and maintained by the city Department of Recreation and Parks.

About 100 children came to the park’s grand opening and watched paraplegic golfer Dennis Walters perform some golf wizardry. They also munched on hamburgers and hot dogs and participated in the academy’s first golf clinic.

Joi began playing golf under the tutelage of her father, Teddy, when she was 7. She was hitting straight, long drives when she was 8, and a few years later she was the best player in her family.

But she was still an oddity to her neighborhood friends, being one of only a few youngsters in her area playing golf.

“When I tell them that I play golf, they talk about me,” she said. “They’ll tell me, ‘Why are you playing golf--golf is for losers,’ but it is something that I enjoy and will always enjoy.”

Now, Joi is the only female on the Westchester High School golf team and is the two-time city champion in the girls Division A category.

Joi normally practices at Chester Washington Golf Course in Los Angeles, but the new academy golf course will have one feature that should help her golf game: sand traps. “I really need help with the sand traps,” said Joi, who said she can shave about three strokes from her 4.5 handicap with help in the hazards.

The academy is quite a step up from the miniature golf courses that Alyssa Hall, a 9-year-old from Riverside, is used to playing on. Alyssa, new to the game, thinks the new facility “is going to be a great golf course where kids can just have fun instead of having to compete.”

Ten-year-old Andrea Cintron of Sylmar promised herself to be at every practice session, and Brandon Smith, 9, from Lake View Terrace, was just happy to step foot on the fresh greens.

“This is awesome,” he said.

Named for the late Marty Tregnan, a longtime youth golf booster, the academy will emphasize training for lower-income and at-risk youth.

The LPGA’s Urban Youth Golf Program will provide city instructors with a teaching curriculum.

Children from the San Fernando Valley to East and South L.A. will now have a home course instead of having to jump from course to course to get quality practice time, said the program’s director John Morrison.

“Kids have never had a facility that they can come to, call their own and be accepted,” he said. “That is what Tregnan is all about.”

Children over the age of 6 sign up at their local recreation center for a $25 annual fee that provides classes one day a week for 15 weeks. The city provides equipment and transportation to the academy from the recreation centers, and it will organize team play.

But, young golfers will have to be patient. Six hundred children are signed up for the program and an additional 300 are on a waiting list, Morrison said.