Riverside King Golfer Among Trendsetters

Sommer Scholl was hooked on golf the first time she hit a ball.

She was 8 years old and it was a 10-foot putt.

Scholl had been riding around in a golf cart with her father when he played on weekends. One day she asked if she could play. He put a ball down on the green and told her to give it a whirl.

She made it.

Soon after she began taking lessons and entered her first tournament. She won. Scholl, now a sophomore at Riverside King, won 54 tournaments before entering high school. Now she is the No. 1 player on the golf team -- the boys’ golf team.

Riverside King does not have a girls’ golf team so Scholl has no other choice than to play for the boys’ team. She is among a handful of girls playing on boys’ teams in Southern California. Other notables include Selanee Henderson of Apple Valley Granite Hills and Alice Kim of Brentwood.

Nicole Smith, the 2001 Southern Section girls’ champion, is Scholl’s teammate at King, but she is taking the year off to recuperate from a wrist injury.

“It’s fun playing against the boys,” Scholl said. “Sometimes you see them swing harder and they get mad easier when I’m beating them. They want to prove that they are better than me.”

That’s not often the case, even though playing against boys means teeing up against players who hit the ball 30 or 40 yards past her off the tee and playing from the back tees.

Scholl, who averages about 220 yards off the tee, routinely hits three and five woods into par-four holes when competitors are using seven irons, yet in the 12 matches she has played this season, she has been the low scorer eight times. She had the best score for her team in all 12 and has a nine-hole average of 38.

In an early season tournament, she shot two-under-par 70 from the blue tees at Empire Lakes Golf Club, site of a Nationwide Tour event, and finished second out of 108 players.

When she wins, it doesn’t always leave a pleasant taste in the mouths of her opponents.

“High school boys don’t like to get beat by a girl,” King Coach Mike Martin said. “But word has gotten out. Everybody knows how good she is.”

Since girls’ golf didn’t become a sanctioned sport in Southern California until 1998, girls playing golf on boys’ teams is nothing new. But while it might not be news on the high school level, gender mixing is making headlines on the professional level.

Annika Sorenstam will play in the PGA Tour’s Colonial next month. Suzy Whaley will play in the Greater Hartford Open in July and 13-year-old Michelle Wie plans on playing in a handful of Canadian Tour events this summer.

“I like that,” Scholl said of Sorenstam. “I think that’s good. I think she has a lot of courage to go out there when she’s thinking all those guys are against her.”

If Scholl could give Sorenstam advice, it would be to take advantage of her opponents’ fears.

“I’d tell her to go out there and don’t worry about the guys who think you’re gonna do bad,” Scholl said. “They’re just scared that you’re gonna beat them.”

Girls who can beat guys are almost guaranteed a college scholarship and many go on to professional careers.

For instance, three-time LPGA Tour winner Emilee Klein played for Sherman Oaks Notre Dame from 1990-92. Candie Kung, leading the LPGA Tour event in Las Vegas entering today’s final round, played at Fountain Valley High from 1996-99. Linda Ishii, an LPGA Tour rookie, played for the CIF-SCGA champion Westlake High team in 1996.

Scholl appears headed for similar success. She won the 1999 Junior World Championship, was the youngest ever to play in a Futures Tour event when she got a sponsor exemption at 13 and has 76 career tournament victories.

“Playing from so far back, I’ve improved my short game a whole lot,” Scholl said. “Hitting a three or five wood into par fours, I’m going to miss some greens so I have to chip and putt to make a par.”

With Smith rejoining Scholl next year, King could be a legitimate contender for the Southern Section girls’ title, but the school doesn’t have enough players.

But there aren’t three other girls at the school who can break 100, and that is fine with Scholl.

“Personally,” she said, “I would rather play with the boys.”