Golf / Rich Tosches : Leonard Brothers Take Their Best Shots in Duel for Club Championship

Golf, even among total strangers, can turn into harsh competition. But when you pit brothers against each other on a golf course, you’re virtually begging for an explosion of a magnitude that might produce a mushroom cloud.

Jeff and Rob Leonard played against each other last weekend for the club championship at El Caballero Country Club in Tarzana. These are some of the things you might have expected:

On the first tee, Jeff places a live wasp in Rob’s ear during his backswing. Twenty minutes later, when Rob stops shrieking and gets up off the ground, Jeff apologizes. He says it was an accident.

On the fifth hole, Rob retaliates by kicking his brother’s golf ball into a sand trap when he’s not looking and then stomping on it. Jeff takes a 14 on the par-4 hole after nine attempts to get the ball out of the trap fail and he is finally forced to use a posthole digger to extricate it. Rob laughs in his face and says he hopes Jeff hurt his back.

On the 18th green, with Jeff standing over a 6-foot putt for the championship, Rob ties a rope to the belt loops on his brother’s pants and attaches the other end to the bumper of a bread delivery truck in the parking lot. He smiles a moment later as the truck jerks Jeff across the green and into the refreshment stand just as his putter strikes the ball.

Truth is, nothing like that happened. What did happen is that Jeff, 28, won the club championship for the third consecutive year and Rob, 25, finished second. And together, they made their father’s heart swell with pride to the size of a cantaloupe.

“What I remember most is them coming down the 15th fairway together with their arms around each other’s shoulders,” David Leonard said. “As a parent, you just absolutely die when you see something like that. You see so many brothers who don’t have any of the same interests and don’t even talk to each other.”

But while there are no violent confrontations between the brothers, both make it clear that winning feels better than losing.

“I think it should be written that Rob Leonard played beautiful golf for three days and turned in the performance of his life but was still eight strokes behind his brother, who played even better,” Jeff said, laughing.

From Rob: “His beating me is getting pretty old, but he doesn’t dominate me on the golf course. Don’t let him tell you that stuff. Ask him if he wants to play a little basketball against me.”

Rob played varsity basketball for Arizona State in 1981.

“Yeah, he’s a pretty good basketball player,” Jeff admitted. “But I thought this was a story about golf.”

Application$: Valencia Country Club, which became a private club in June, 1987, after 23 years of public golf and attracted 430 members in less than a year, will accept as many as 100 new members in September, club president Karl Uesugi has announced.

The club stopped taking applications in June when its membership exceeded 400.

The cost to join the club during its first year of private ownership was $27,000 for an individual membership and $54,000 for a corporate membership. The new fees will be $40,000 for an individual membership and $80,000 for a corporate membership. Monthly dues will be $175 and $350, respectively.

The Valencia layout was designed by Robert Trent Jones. Construction is currently under way on a 43,500-square-foot clubhouse, which is expected to open next June. A restaurant and lounge will be open to the public.

The course was purchased by Uniden Valencia, Inc., in 1985 and continued to operate as a public course until 1987. Uniden previously sponsored an LPGA tournament in Costa Mesa, and club spokesman H.A. (Bud) Tenerani said Tuesday the club hopes to attract a professional women’s event to Valencia.

Where the girls are: Carrie Leary of Valencia finished first and Renee Hunt of Tarzana took third place in a recent invitational tournament at Rancho San Joaquin Golf Course. Leary, who plays out of Vista Valencia Golf Course, posted a one-shot victory over Linda Chen of Industry Hills in the girls’ 15-17 age group by shooting a 5-over-par 77. Hunt, who plays out of Braemar Country Club, finished three strokes behind with an 80.