Help yourself, fella

Not too long after she was truly hooked on golf, trading in six nights a week of competitive softball for a daily dose of the sport, Lisa Marie Petersen noticed she was bracing herself every time she approached the tee box. Unless her shot was perfect, it was a given that one of the men would proffer a tip, a comment on her grip or stance or alignment or swing. And the day would be ruined.

“My shoulders would slam into my neck,” says the TV and film writer, who had a 14 handicap at the time. Far from being the help it was intended to be, the unsolicited coaching was becoming the obstacle to a great round. “I walk now,” Petersen says. “That way you can control who talks to you. I don’t even have to go up to their tee box anymore. I just go right to the red tees.”

Cathy Tennican, former president of the women’s club at Rancho Park Golf Course, says, “I used to joke that the surest way to pick up a guy was go out to the putting green. They just couldn’t stand watching me do something they thought was wrong, and they’d come up to me and say, ‘Sweetheart, can I just show you something?’ ”

Throw four male strangers together for five hours, as happens in golf, and social miracles can transpire. The guy who works in the mailroom can outdrive the CEO, and pretty soon the most respected player in the group is the one who has the least power outside it. But add a woman to the mix and the formula’s a lock: She gets coached. “I’ve come off the course fuming and I’ll ask guys, why do they do that?” Petersen says. “And they’ll say, well, they do it to each other. But I don’t see it. It’s three guys and they’re all trying to coach me.”

Andi Adams spent years letting it interfere with her game before crafting a stop-it-in-its-tracks response. “I don’t think there was ever a time it helped,” says Adams, who has a 13 handicap. There was also the irony that, as a psychotherapist, she knew better. “The problem was I didn’t bring the boundaries I had learned in life onto the course. I didn’t say, ‘Oh, are you a teaching pro?’ or ‘Thank you, I’m working with someone,’ which I do now.”

Darryl Hickman, a child star and former CBS executive who runs a popular dramatic workshop at the Debbie Reynolds Studio in North Hollywood, took up the game three years ago when wife Lynda became obsessed with it. As they started to move from the driving range onto the course, “the other players would instruct us, especially her. And they would tell her really stupid things. It would make me crazy.” Soon they were planning their play around days they could go out as a twosome. They didn’t miss the socializing. “We just want to work on our game,” Linda says.

The instruction is generally well-meant, say Tennican and Adams. “It’s their way of connecting,” Adams theorizes. “Men are helpers. They want to fix things.” And after a couple of hours, the need to step in becomes almost irresistible, Petersen finds.

“By the ninth hole you’ve been through war-type conditions with these people,” she says. “You’ve been through their good shots, their bad shots, their mud, their bad lies. You’re friends. They like you. They’re comfortable with you. They think you’re worthy of their coaching. It comes from the goodness of their hearts, God bless them. But that’s the worst thing you can do to a person when they’re trying to golf. The worst thing you can do to me.”

What’s maddening, says Tennican, who competed in tennis and skiing before devoting herself to golf, is that “the worse somebody plays the more likely they are to offer you help. I’ve thought, ‘How can anyone who swings that badly have the gall?’ ”

“You’ve just duck-hooked the ball, you’re in the woods and you’re giving me tips?” Adams says. “I just don’t get that.”

She was moved to compliment one partner recently because he hadn’t volunteered advice. “He said he’d learned a long time ago not to give tips to women. He was in Hawaii and paired with a woman and thought he was in for a bad time. She drove it 240 yards straight down the middle of the fairway. It was a turning point for him, to never assume that a woman wasn’t going to be a good player.”

The better player a man is, the more focused he is on his game and the less likely to focus on others, the women have found. “I see it with actors,” Hickman says. “You work with a really good actor and he doesn’t say anything, while the dumbbell is always telling you what to do.”

Not that novices should inflict themselves on other golfers before they’re ready. A good teaching pro, a lot of lessons, a lot of time on the range are critical, Tennican says. “Golf offers a lifetime of pleasure,” she says, “if you can get over the initial hump.”

There’s also the sanctuary of women’s clubs. The 8,000-member Women’s Public Golf Links Assn. has clubs at municipal courses throughout Southern California; most offer group play during the week, though a few have weekend tee times.

Flat, forgiving nine-hole courses such as Penmar and the Lakes at El Segundo are touted as good places to start. For the same reasons, Balboa, Encino and Woodley Lakes beckon when the novice golfer is ready for 18 holes. “You hit the ball at Woodley Lakes and it rolls forever,” says Petersen, who goes to the range as often as she can.

And don’t start changing your game while on the course, or allow others to do it for you, the players say. “The time for coaching is at the driving range,” Petersen says.

Once you’re on the course, “You’ve done all the hard work. All you should do is just enjoy the sun and let it fly.”