All Who Enter at 18, Beware

RANCHO MIRAGE —  My views on great finishing holes in tournament golf ought to be well-known but may bear repeating here.

The 18th hole should be an Enforcer, the Terminator, if you will. It’d be a great part for Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Its job is to keep the riff-raff out, to make sure the tournament is won by the worthy, the entitled, not some one-putt who got lucky.

It should be difficult, but not too, and especially not apparently. It should be like a siren sitting on a rock combing her hair enticing wayward sailors. It should be like that cliche of crime, the choirboy who looks too angelic to have just killed his entire family and the people next door. In other words, it’s a serial killer masquerading as a Good Samaritan, or just a good guy. A homicidal hunk with a baby face.

Take the 18th at Mission Hills, where it is in charge of keeping order for the Nabisco Dinah Shore LPGA tournament this week.

Now, on the face of it, this looks like a sylvan paradise, 526 yards of the most gorgeous real estate in the desert. It has these lovely rippling ponds, birds singing in the trees, little undulations in the fairway, decorative sand bunkers strategically placed. It looks like a great place to go fishing. Or hold a picnic.

I imagine the iceberg in the north Atlantic had a certain grandeur and beauty to it too, before it hit the Titanic. Dracula’s castle probably looked romantic in the moonlight too. If you couldn’t hear the wolves.

The 18th doesn’t fool me for a minute. I know it for the harlot it is. A few years ago, I had been poised to do a column on the great player Nancy Lopez, who had never missed a cut to my knowledge since she was a high school player. She came up to 18 comfortably in the tournament and in contention. I wandered out to watch her humble the last hole on her second round. I found her standing by the pond. I turned to a spectator. “Don’t tell me she hit it there!” I said desperately. “Twice, “ he told me, holding up two fingers.

Nancy took a nine or so, shot herself out of her first tournament in years.

The 18th hasn’t reformed. The only trouble is, it occasionally misinterprets its role. It’s not the Nancy Lopezes we depend on it to eliminate, it’s the one-tournament wonders.

To the casual eye, it may be a great place to bring the family to commune with nature. To a golfer, it’s a quarter-mile of silent screaming.

It threads its way between trees on one side and water on the other. It invites you to go for danger.

This Terminator’s terminus is an island green that must look to the golfer coming down the fairway like a doormat with a flag in it.

Now, you can take the driver off the tee, let the shaft out and hope you have a long iron or at least a four-wood second shot to the green. But you really shouldn’t do that unless you’re already three shots in arrears and you really don’t care if you make a nine.

An 18th hole should never be one you can overpower. An 18th hole should be one you have to romance--come on the tee with flowers in one hand. And an iron in the other. You don’t want to get its attention. You want to sneak up on it, be halfway to the hole before it knows you haven’t come to sing under the balcony. You have to keep an element of surprise. Once, one of the women pros, I think it was Joanne Carner, said: “I feel as if my ball came to rest on a sleeping bear. “

The LPGA golfers largely tiptoed onto this sleeping bear this week. They were well-advised.

A par five for the average professional of any gender is a place to make four, hopefully, even three. But on opening day of the Dinah Shore last week, the average score on 18 was 5.074. There were no eagle threes and only 23 birdies. There were more scores over par (24) than under. On the second day, the average score moved up to 5.422. No eagles and only 11 birdies (versus 52 scores over par).

That’s what an 18 is all about. A sound of splashes, a muttered curse, a frantic shout, “Fore, right!”

Of course, there was a steady wind affecting Friday’s play, but a good 18th sneers at the wind. It doesn’t need it.

You look down the list of scoring and you see daily scores like 8-6-5 on No. 18 (Michelle Estill), or 6-6-4 (Michelle McGann) or 6-7-6 (Jill Briles-Hinton).

Then, you look down the leader board and you see how the leaders played 18. Kelly Robbins had 4-5-5, Amy Fruhwirth, 5-5-5. Betsy King had 6-5-5, Annika Sorenstam, 4-5-5.

Only the great Laura Davies took liberties with 18 on Saturday. Coming up to it only three under and trailing the leaders by eight strokes, Laura went for the jugular. The result was the obligatory loud splash--and Laura was 5-6-6 for her three trips on 18. Laura knows 18 the way Dempsey knows Tunney or Napoleon, Wellington. She’s tried everything to catch it unawares. But it knows her. It’s waiting for her.

That’s the trouble with 18s. They’re equal-opportunity wreckers. They’ll whomp somebody shooting an 81--or they’ll take on a legend of golf. They take their job seriously. Those other 17 holes out there are all wimps not to be trusted to not lie down on the job. First thing you know, no-namers are sinking no-brainers to win all the money. But 18s know their job--separate the women from the girls and the girls from the money.

Betsy King has been there. Sharing the lead with Kelly Robbins at the close of business Saturday, Betsy allowed, “Having the lead going into the last round doesn’t mean too much here.”

Actually, with 18 standing there mockingly, having the lead going into the last hole may not mean too much.

The fat lady doesn’t sing till the field plays 18. And then the one who jumps in Dinah’s pond there may not be celebrating. She may just be the 18th’s 61st victim this week.

Golf’s capital punisher.