WHEN you're stuck with lemons you can make lemonade, but Mark Simpson has another solution: Hold a golf tournament.

Simpson's "lemon" problem began last fall ("Through The Green," November/December). He and his family own the regulation nine-hole Fountain Springs Golf Course in Rapid City, S.D., in the eastern foothills of the Black Hills. The Simpsons had been in a long-running dispute with neighbor Bruce Jacob ever since a survey revealed that Jacob actually owned the land comprising a portion of the third green. The parties could not agree on a price for the land, and negotiations stalled.

Enter the lemons. Last Oct. 7 Jacob moved two junk pickup trucks to his portion of the green. He also parked two junk cars nearby, next to the cart path leading to the fourth tee.

Jacob was making a statement, but the junkers may have backfired. Play increased at Fountain Springs as golfers flocked to play the new hazards. The Simpsons redesigned the green, put up a fence and withdrew their offer to buy the land. Then they complained to city officials about the wrecks, which violate city regulations for storing junk cars. Jacob was ordered by officials to move the cars.

Jacob moved an old Ford pickup off the green this winter, but an ancient Chevy pickup, an old Subaru wagon and a trashed Firebird remained as of early April.

Simpson is unconcerned.

On May 5, Fountain Springs was scheduled to hold a tournament celebrating the grand reopening of the third hole. The entry fee was two cans of food, which were to be donated to the local Cornerstone Rescue Mission. Simpson also will donate cash sales -- from cart rentals and other services -- to a local children's charity.

First prize? A junk car, of course.

"We're not kidding, either," says course manager Brian Chleborad. The tournament will be a four-man scramble. The winning group will draw straws for the "lemon," supplied by Simpson, and the loser has to drive it away. "I don't care where they take it," Chleborad says. "It just has to be away from here."

City officials say they expect Jacob to cooperate and move the other lemons. Simpson hasn't pressed his case because a bitter South Dakota winter followed by spring blizzards made it hard to get to the cars. "I don't think there is going to be any problem," Simpson says. Besides, the junkers are part of the charm of the third hole -- a 340-yard "lay up" par 4 guarded by a small pond, an old Chevy pickup, a trashed Subaru and a derelict Firebird.

"It's a spoof is what it is," Chleborad says. "We want the wrecks there."

After the story in Golf Journal, Simpson and Chleborad heard from golfers from all over the country. Local golfers were especially pleased. "They thought it was really nice the USGA took an interest in a small-town golf course," Chleborad said.

-- Bill Harlan

NO BARRIERSAT CLEMSON

ATTENDEES of the fifth National Forum on Accessible Golf, held last month at Clemson (S.C.) University, had no trouble lining up a course for their end-of-the-meetings outing. In fact, they were the first "official" players at the university's Walker Course, already hailed by disabled golfers and their advocates as a model for accessibility.

Land once used as an outdoor laboratory for agricultural students, the D.J. Devictor-designed layout incorporates subtle entrance-exit points for bunkers and greens, curb-less cart paths and other features that remove obstacles hindering the disabled.

"The concept of inclusion should be our beacon," Clemson president Dr. Constantine W. Curtis told the audience at the opening, "because inclusion focuses on our commonalities."

The overriding commonality this day was a passion for golf. Instead of a ribbon-cutting, the course, opened unofficially late last autumn, was inaugurated with simultaneous putts by four disabled golfers. Despite the outward difference of players in single-seat carts and blind golfers using sighted coaches, they displayed one commonality with the able-bodied when the round ended: part of the group returned to the 10th tee for an emergency nine before sundown.

HONORS STUDENT

JUST WHEN you think America's youth is speeding down the road to destruction, piercing various body parts and dyeing their hair the color of carrots, someone comes along and restores some semblance of order. Frank J. Russo Jr. of Cranston, R.I., is that someone.

During the second round of the Doral Public Links Junior Championship, the 13-year-old discovered something terribly wrong in his golf bag -- two 7-irons, which put him one over the 14-club limit. No one noticed the oversight except Russo, who immediately called in an official to explain the situation.

With the four penalty strokes added to his score, Russo finished third but just five strokes behind the eventual winner. But his final place in the field of 107 wasn't important, nor how the extra club found its way into his bag. "It was against the Rules," he explained matter-of-factly, "so I got an official."

It should surprise no one that Russo, who attends Providence Country Day School, is an honors student.

"FORE"FROM ABOVE

ANYONE who has had trouble concentrating on the golf course might consider taking a few pointers from Irv Brown of Boca Raton, Fla.

Brown was part of a group playing the first hole at Boca Raton Municipal Golf Course in mid-February when out of the clear blue sky should come, not an errant ball from another hole, but an airplane. Not an airplane climbing to cruising altitude, but an airplane having mechanical troubles and in search of level ground -- the fairway Brown and his fellow competitors were playing -- for an emergency landing.

Except that Brown and his fellow competitors were so into their games they failed to realize danger was upon them. Not until the pilot abandoned his first choice and scrambled for an alternative landing site did the golfers react. The result? Pilot Scott Slinko skimmed the tops of some palm trees and put the plane down elsewhere on the course, not in one piece but without major injury to himself, his passenger or anyone on the ground.

"Everything would have been okay if those damn golfers would have moved out of the way," Slinko told a Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel reporter afterward. "We were coming down and they weren't moving."

PROVISIONALS

A REFERENCE to Morningside College in our story on Dr. Glenn Burton ("His Research Goes with the Grain," March/April) should have placed the college in its proper location -- Sioux City, Iowa. The "My Home Course" story on Augusta (Ga.) Country Club (March/April) misspelled the name of the club's unofficial historian. Her name is Eileen Stulb. A reference to Jal should have placed the city in New Mexico.

NECROLOGY

DON CLAYTON of Fayetteville, N.C., who died April 17 at the age of 70, got into golf quite by accident. Instructed by a doctor to take a vacation to relieve job-related stress, Clayton discovered the world of miniature golf. He soon began designing and copyrighting holes, which led to the formation of Putt-Putt Golf and Games, a franchise of nearly 300 courses. In the late 1950s he also founded the Professional Putters Association, a tour of miniature golf tournaments.

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A. FREDERICK Kammer Jr. of Hobe Sound, Fla., was both an outstanding golfer and hockey player. He was a semifinalist in the 1946 U.S. Amateur and a member of the U.S. team that won the Walker Cup the following year. A native of the Detroit area, he was a 12-time club champion at the Country Club of Detroit and twice at Bloomfield Hills Country Club. He attended Princeton University, where he captained the hockey team, and also was a member of the United States team that won a bronze medal in the 1936 Olympic Games in Germany.

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W.N.B. (NIEL) LOUDON, 78, held a series of administrative posts at the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews between 1963 and 1982, when he retired as deputy secretary.

Following the Second World War he worked for the Colonial Administrative Service in Kenya, where he also served on the executive committee of the Kenya Golfing Society. In 1958 he captained the Kenyan team in the inaugural World Amateur Team Championship.

He was appointed assistant secretary of the R&A in 1963 and four years later became deputy secretary. He was particularly involved in the areas of amateur status and the Rules of Golf. In 1981, in honor of his long and distinguished service to golf, he was awarded the Order of the British Empire.

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ANN SAMFORD UPCHURCH, 68, who died March 10, excelled in her disparate interests of golf and cattle ranching. A decade-long member of the USGA Women's Committee beginning in 1972, she was a past president of the Alabama Women's, Women's Southern and Women's Western associations.

The only player collecting Alabama Women's Amateur titles in three decades, the lifelong Birmingham resident was the daughter of Frank Park Samford, after whom Samford University took its name. A staunch supporter of junior golf, she was inducted into the Birmingham GA Hall of Fame in 1985 and received its highest honor, the Joe H. King Award, in 1993.

As owner and operator of Grey Rocks Ranch in Autauga County, she was the first woman inductee into the Alabama Livestock Association and Alabama Agriculture halls of fame. At the time of her death, the grand national champion Santa Gertrudis bull came from the Grey Rocks herd.