Golf / Rich Tosches : Hwang Scores a Par of a Singular Nature

Henry Hwang made a par on the par-3, 164-yard 10th hole at Saticoy Country Club during the weekend. Pars, of course, are not normally major golf news. And this one becomes only slightly more noteworthy when one learns that Hwang did it despite a whopping 32 handicap, meaning that his average 18-hole score is roughly the same as the average August temperature in Barstow. At noon.

But Hwang’s par was big talk around the Saticoy clubhouse not because he did it, but because of how he did it.

He pounded his first shot off the elevated tee into a nightmarish tangle of brush and lost the golf ball.

So he walked back, put another ball on the tee and whistled it onto the green and into the cup.

Because of the two-stroke penalty for a lost ball, Hwang had accomplished one of golf’s rarest and most treasured feats: a hole-in-three.

A new member of the club, Hwang, of Los Angeles, was playing with a threesome of established members for his first round. On the 10th tee, he swung mightily and topped the ball, the head of his 4-iron catching just a few of the golf ball’s dimples and sending it hissing along the grass.

It traveled to the end of the tee area, about 20 feet, and crashed into a thicket of sagebrush and other heavy vegetation.

It was a shot that should have required the filing of an environmental impact report.

After a futile search, Hwang teed up another ball and pulled out the 4-iron for another attempt. As his partners watched from the back of the tee and suppressed the urge to smirk, Hwang uncorked another swing that once again didn’t quite seem to have jumped from a golf video on perfect golf.

The golf ball, however, didn’t seem to care. It flew long and straight, landed at the front of the green and rolled true, slamming against the pin and dropping into the cup for a par of the variety that perhaps only Hwang and Rod Serling have ever carded.

Hwang’s partners yelled and whooped and slapped their new friend on the back for several minutes. Loud bouts of laughter followed.

“Two of the guys were still laughing about it an hour later,” said a Saticoy member who watched the Hwang celebration after the round was over.

Golf, indeed, is a Hweird game.

Fund-raiser: The 10th Bill Van Gieson Memorial Golf tournament will be held Oct. 3 at Calabasas Golf and Country Club, with proceeds going to the Calabasas Chamber of Commerce.

A Texas scramble format will be used in the event, which includes ladies and mixed flights.

Information: 818-992-7600.

Divot stompin’: The Academy of Country Music will hold its sixth celebrity golf classic Oct. 17 at De Bell Golf Course in Burbank. Proceeds will go to the T. J. Martell Foundation and the Neil Bogart Memorial Laboratory for cancer and leukemia research.

Entertainers scheduled to play include Pat Boone, Charlie Daniels, Eddie Rabbitt, Catherine Bach and Randy Owen of the group Alabama.

Information: 213-462-2351.

A Pate on the back: Steve Pate of Simi Valley won $88,000 for his second-place tie in a $1 million PGA tournament last weekend in Castle Rock, Colo.

Pate, who began 1988 by winning the Tournament of Champions at La Costa Country Club in Carlsbad, finished in a tie with Dan Pohl with 13 points. A modified Stableford scoring system that awards points for birdies and eagles and deducts points for bogeys or worse was used.

Joey Sindelar won the event with 18 points and earned $180,000.

Runaway: Carie Leary of Vista Valencia Country Club captured first place in the girls’ division of last week’s Los Angeles County Championships at Knollwood Country Club.

Leary shot a 73 to win the junior invitational by a six-stroke margin.