Golf column -- Looking out for Kailani

If you see little Kailani on the golf course this season with the

Newport Harbor High girls, you can’t help but think that, one day, she

might be the leader of the program.

She’s the 3 1/2-year-old adopted daughter of Sandy Huber, Big Canyon

Country Club assistant pro and LPGA member who also coaches the Sailors’

girls golf team with Jim Warren and Marianne Towersey.

Through Olive Crest, Huber became Kailani’s foster parent, not long

after her birth. She raised the child and, naturally, they grew close.

Amazingly, Kailani even looks like Huber, who struggled for two years

before finally landing the official adoption rights to Kailani on Sept.

22, 1998.

Huber, who will celebrate her 15th year at Big Canyon in October, has

Kailani in tow during Newport Harbor matches and the girls have, well,

also adopted her.

“She’s 3 1/2 and hitting balls with the girls,” Huber said. “When we

go to practice with the girls, she’ll go, and when the girls are walking

down the fairways, they’ll have her on their shoulders and back.

(Kailani) just takes one club and whacks it around with them. I’m hoping

she’s going to be my little golfer.”

Kailani’s tall enough to pass for 6, Huber said, so it could be that

volleyball -- not golf -- is in her future.

“I’m not really serious with her, but her attention span is there,”

Huber said. “I’m telling you, it’s so much fun.”

Huber, now a spokesperson for Olive Crest, a home for battered and

abused children, was hired by Bob Lovejoy to start the junior program in

Oct. 1984. Lovejoy, the club’s longtime head pro, is now director of

golf.

Today, Huber has 180 juniors on her mailing list and junior golf has

turned into “a monster.”

“I attribute the growth in junior golf to Tiger Woods, who built the

interest in children,” Huber said of the Big Canyon course record holder

and honorary member.

It’s reseeding time for golf courses, including at Big Canyon, which

is closed for two weeks because of the project, and Newport Beach Country

Club, which will reseed its grass while working on other fall

reconstruction projects.

The famous bunker on the right side on the 17th green at Newport Beach

will be redesigned to compensate for the hillside rough between the green

and the lake. Coots flock to the hillside and eat the seed, causing balls

to roll off, either into the bunker or water.

That’s what happened to Hale Irwin in the 1998 Toshiba Senior Classic,

when his ball was saved from rolling into the lake by a bunker rake.

Irwin would break the course record that day with a 62.

Club president Jerry Anderson said the bunker will be extended 15 to

20 feet so balls will not roll into the water.

“We’ll make two bunkers into one,” said Anderson, the 1999 Southern

California PGA Golf Professional of the Year. “It’s our signature hole

and (the project) should make the hole look better.”

Work begins Friday at Newport Beach, which will also make the driving

range level, build a mound behind the fifth green and reconstruct the

third and sixth tee boxes. After the 2000 Toshiba Classic, the club will

build a mound behind the 18th green.

Former Ram Rich Saul (a Corona del Mar resident) will serve Monday as

celebrity chairman of the 10th annual Corporate Challenge Cup at Santa

Ana Country Club to benefit the American Cancer Society (Orange County

Region).

Saul, a former All-Pro center, was diagnosed with colon cancer this

year and underwent surgery in April. In May, he began an eight-month

chemotherapy program. Details: (949) 261-9446.

Richard Dunn’s golf column appears every Thursday.