Equipment manufacturers were asked by the USGA to present their opinions on the USGA's testing on the "spring-like effect" of certain metal-headed woods. When that day arrived, as the latest step in a process begun in December 1997, only a handful of speakers approached the podium.

With nine USGA Executive Committee members assembled and, as one presenter noted, "more lawyers in this room today than golf club engineers," only four companies made formal presentations concerning a proposed change to Rule 4-1e in Appendix II of the Rules of Golf.

About 125 representatives of the USGA, manufacturers, media and interested bystanders traveled to the AT&T Learning Center in Basking Ridge, N.J., for the Sept. 28 session. The open forum was called by the USGA in June to address questions arising after the Association first commented on spring-like effect to various manufacturers in a December 1997 letter. The proposed test, which measures in terms of velocity the spring-like effect of club heads, was publicized this spring by manufacturers who said it would limit technological innovation.

"I'd like to emphasize to everyone that today's meeting is but one part of a process that is designed to assure that the USGA Executive Committee will have before it all relevant information and positions before it makes a decision regarding the proposed test protocol," O. Gordon Brewer Jr. said in his opening remarks. Brewer, the chairman of the USGA Implements and Ball Committee, chaired the forum.

Some manufacturers originally voiced their opinions of the test protocol and questioned whether the test would result in thousands of clubs already sold to golfers as being ruled non-conforming. The USGA, at a June 17 press conference, said it was the Association's expectation that virtually all driving clubs that had been previously submitted to the USGA would conform with the proposed test, but that future clubs would need to meet the standard.

For its part, the USGA offered little comment during the forum, intending to listen to anyone who approached the podium. The meeting room was reserved until

5 p.m. and plans to provide lunch were made. Instead, the forum began at 9:15 a.m. and ended before noon. (A transcript of the proceeding is available through the USGA Web site, found at www.usga.org/test_center.)

Representatives of more than 20 companies attended the forum, but only four made presentations: Daiwa, Karsten, Acushnet and Taylor Made. A few other manufacturers offered comments from the floor, including Liquid Metal and Golfsmith. The proposed test's most outspoken opponent, Callaway, announced that morning that it was withdrawing its presentation. A letter from the company said its correspondence would serve as its statement.

The four presenting manufacturers were split in their opinions. The first three spoke against the procedure while Taylor Made voiced its support.

Representatives of Daiwa and Acushnet's technical departments, who said they replicated the procedure, cited cost — more than $200,000, mostly to buy the stipulated ball launcher — and an abbreviated time frame as preventing them from evaluating the test completely. Each company offered results of its testing.

Achushnet, which made the longest presentation, was also represented by Wally Uihlein, its president and CEO. Uihlein concluded by saying that while Achushnet, which manufacturers balls and clubs under a variety of brands, had complied with previous USGA rulings on equipment, "I cannot say that our position will be the same in the future" if the Executive Committee were to adopt the test procedure.

The opposing point was voiced by George Montgomery, president and CEO of Taylor Made. He noted that in the past five years Taylor Made has "done a tremendous amount of research" into spring-like effect. He said its studies have shown that spring-like effect is real and could theoretically produce up to a 3 percent increase in ball velocity.

"I think a lot of the issue here and the perception is that there is no room for innovation in golf equipment design," Montgomery said. "I believe that to be absolutely false. And I think that this rule does not significantly limit the potential innovation within golf equipment design."

All information gathered during the review and comment period, as well as transcripts and videotapes from the forum, will be presented to each Executive Committee member. The committee is scheduled to gather the last weekend in October for its autumn meeting. At that time it could vote on the proposed rule change or table the action until the USGA's Annual Meeting in February in Clearwater, Fla.

"Today's open forum featured some thoughtful presentations and useful input for our Executive Committee to review and analyze before it reaches a final decision concerning our proposed test protocol," F. Morgan (Buzz) Taylor, the USGA's president, said. "I want to re-emphasize to everyone that all information that was presented will receive careful and thorough consideration."

— Brett Avery

She Keeps Going and Going...

Don't bother asking Charlotte Schulz if she's ready to retire from tournament golf. She already has her next several years planned.

"The 2001 tournament is just around the corner and I've got to get practicing," she says.

Schulz, 67, recently added to her amazing tournament legacy by winning the 1998 Ladies Club Championship at Wichita Falls (Texas) Country Club. It was her 16th WFCC title, but more importantly, it was the fifth different decade she has won her club championship.

"It's been a lot of fun, I played good a couple of times and got lucky a couple of times," she says. "I love the competition and meeting all the players. I just love to play."

Schulz, who first took up the game after graduating from the University of Texas in 1952, won her first club title in 1956. She continued with additional victories in 1958-60, '62, '64, '66, '72, '73, '74, '76, '78, '82, '84, '88 and this fall. She's won in match and medal play as the tournament started in a match-play format but switched to a 36-hole stroke-play event in the 1980s.

"We have some really good players here," said Wichita Falls head professional Bruce Cotton. "She hasn't beaten a bunch of weak fields."

Cotton said Schulz usually won't play more than once or twice a week, but she does practice quite a bit, especially on her short game.

"She is quite a traditionalist," Cotton says. "She still has the wooden woods and uses the old Hogan blade irons. She's quite a player."

Schulz is a former president of the Texas Women's Golf Association and an advocate of amateur tournament golf. She played rarely over a 10-year span in the early 1990s while tending to some family matters, but is thrilled to be back on the tournament victory trail.

"I love some of the statewide tournaments we used to have," she says. "I can't wait for another decade so I can get out there and try to win another title."

— Art Stricklin

A Course Where Riding Is Encouraged

A golf course and hospital in London, Ontario, Canada, have combined efforts to break new ground. Though the holes are a mere 50 to 150 yards long and the course comprises but 10 acres, the Parkside Nine that opened a month ago is built on firm soil that offers wheelchair access everywhere, including tees and greens.

The Parkside Nine is part of the Fanshawe Golf and Country Club, which is owned by the city of London. The Parkside Nine had its genesis five years ago when Parkwood Hospital, a rehabilitation facility that works with many victims of stroke and Parkinson's disease, approached Fanshawe's professional, Mike Olizarevitch, to put on a clinic for people in wheelchairs.

The clinic proved a success, as the participants gained satisfaction from being able to hit putts and golf shots. In time, Olizarevitch and the course superintendent, John Cowie, designed the Parkside Nine.

"The idea sprung out of my head after that first clinic," Olizarevitch says. "I thought that I could walk out of the club anytime and get broadsided by a car, and that it would be good to do something for people who couldn't play conventional courses."

The holes are built on a reclaimed gravel pit, which accounts for their firmness.

"The single-rider golf carts have helped us tremendously," says Bev Regan, a therapeutic recreation specialist with Parkwood Hospital. "I work with mainly retired people who golfed before their strokes, and they wanted to get out on the course again. That's been their dream."

The dream can be realized on the Parkside Nine. Says Regan: "When you look at all the retired people, women and men, and younger people, too, who have had spinal cord injuries, say they feel so good on the course, you should see them hit the ball."

— Lorne Rubenstein

It Was a Close Match — For Just a While

The final match at the Junior Falls Cities Championship was close after nine holes, but Len Ashby turned the 36-hole contest into a runaway when his opponent, uh, ran away.

Ashby was leading the final at Shawnee Golf Course in Louisville, Ky., after 10 holes, 1 up, when Kyle Newell was forced to abandon the match in order to make an appearance in Jefferson District Court. Ashby continued alone for eight holes until Newell, who was sentenced for his part in vandalizing Ballard High School on the last day of school earlier in the summer, could make it back to the course.

"It was a boring eight holes I played," Ashby said. "They weren't allowed to give me the holes when he wasn't there. I had to play them out. I felt kind of bad because he couldn't play the holes, but those are the rules." Ashby padded his lead every time he finished a hole, getting to 9 up before Newell returned.

In order to get in as many holes as possible before Newell had to leave for court, the finalists played the first nine holes in an hour. "Len couldn't have been nicer and more cooperative," Newell said.

Newell, who graduated from high school last spring, said he didn't foresee a problem when he entered the tournament because he didn't anticipate making the final. He was sentenced to 25 hours of community service after offering his regrets for his role in what had become an annual prank at the school. He was one of nine persons charged with criminal mischief.

Ashby won by a final score of 8 and 7 and joined such former winners as Frank Beard, Bobby Nichols and Jodie Mudd, whose victories came under more normal circumstances.

— Stan Sutton

Four Chosen For Santiago

Two U.S. Amateur champions and two runners-up will head to Santiago, Chile, next month on a quest to regain the Eisenhower Trophy for the U.S.

Henry Kuehne, 23, from McKinney, Texas, and Matt Kuchar, 20, from Lake Mary, Fla., will be joined by 44-year-old Tom McKnight of Galax, Va., and 21-year-old Joel Kribel of Pleasanton, Calif.

The Americans could take part in a record field for the World Amateur Team Championships, which topped out at 49 teams six years ago in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

A total of 59 teams tendered an entry to this year's competition.

Kribel is the lone player with international experience, registering a 1-2 record in last year's Walker Cup Match and taking part in the team that finished ninth in Manila, Philippines, two years ago.

Kuehne won the U.S. Amateur last month, succeeding 1997 champion Kuchar. McKnight was the runner-up at this year's Amateur and was part of the Virginia team that proved victorious in the inaugural U.S. State Team Championship in 1995.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the competition for the Eisenhower Trophy, an event that the U.S. men's team has won 10 times but only once (1994) in the last seven playings. The 72-hole stroke-play event has a four-player team counting its best three scores on each day toward the team total. Each nation in the Nov. 19-22 competition will play two rounds at Club de Golf Los Leones and two rounds at Club de Golf La Dehesa.

— Brett Avery

Committed to The Cause

San Antonio's Joe Conrad always figured amateur golf gave him a great gift, so the least he could do was return the favor.

Conrad, who grew up playing the city's Brackenridge Park, the oldest public course in Texas, was a member of the 1955 Walker Cup team and went on to win the British Amateur that same year. But his biggest victory may have been his continued involvement in San Antonio junior golf.

In 1985, Conrad, now 68, established an endowment to provide trophies for the winners at the city junior championship held annually at Brackenridge Park. "Since I played in one of the first junior tournaments here," he says, "I feel like I'm giving back by giving these kids a chance to compete for trophies."

He sometimes takes part in the trophy presentation, even though most of the current players don't know he was a golf star in his era. Conrad said he takes pleasure with every trophy presented. "Last year, we had 305 kids entered in the city junior and 72 walked away with trophies. That's a pretty good accomplishment."

Conrad walked away with plenty of trophies in his golfing career. He participated in six U.S. Opens and was a member of multiple U.S. teams in the Americas Cup, an international competition featuring teams from the U.S., Canada and Mexico. He was a member of the winning Walker Cup team in 1955 and was part of the U.S. contingent that decided to stay over an extra week for the British Amateur.

Conrad advanced until he captured his only national golf title. "That was a narrow course with small greens," Conrad recalled. "I was raised at Brackenridge Park, so narrow shots don't bother me." To further cap his trip, he was the low amateur at the British Open, also held at St. Andrews. Conrad played on one more Americas Cup team, then decided to turn pro in 1958. He lasted one year on the PGA Tour before returning to San Antonio to become head professional at the newly opened Canyon Creek Country Club, now known as Deer Canyon.

But little has changed in Conrad's dedication to amateur golf in his hometown. "We've always appreciated what Joe Conrad has done for the city junior tournament," said former San Antonio Golf Association executive director Nick Milanovich. "He called us up, asking what he could do to help, and he's been consistent every year since."

The $25,000 endowment Conrad established more than a decade ago continues to grow and aid dozens of players. "Having a person the stature of Joe Conrad attached to our junior tournament is just great," says Tony Piazzi of the SAGA.

Conrad, who still plays twice at week at Fair Oaks C.C. in nearby Boerne, said he continues to be amazed by the number of talented juniors attracted to the game of golf. "Now kids are starting younger and younger each year. They're starting when they're 6, 7 and 8. I started when I was 13 or 14. I started on the public courses, then began caddieing to make some money."

The amount he's made over the decades is far outdistanced by the amount he's given back to the game he loves.

— Art Stricklin

Necrology

Since he was as much a mentor to aspiring club professionals as he was a player, the murder of Donnell G. (Buck) Adams came as a shock not only to his hometown of Pinehurst, N.C., but to clubs across the Carolinas. According to police reports, Adams was shot in his home at the Country Club of North Carolina; Pinehurst police charged his son, Robert, with murder.

Adams became the pro at CCNC when it opened in 1963 and retired from the position in 1991. According to the Carolinas PGA Section, more than two dozen of his assistants have become head pros across the Carolinas alone.

A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Adams was an occasional competitor on the Senior PGA Tour. Two years ago he was elected to the Carolinas PGA Hall of Fame.

After returning to the U.S. following World War II, where he lost a leg in combat, DALE S. BOURISSEAU was encouraged to play golf as a means of therapy. In 1947 he started a tournament for amputees, which became an annual event, and two years later he founded the National Amputee Golf Association, which today has more than 4,000 members. He was 81 when he died in early September.

CARY MIDDLECOFF, 77 when he died Sept. 1, was among the greatest players of his era.

After winning four consecutive Tennessee Amateurs, he turned professional and had immediate success. Within three years he'd won eight times, including the 1949 U.S. Open at Medinah (Ill.) Country Club, the first of his two U.S. Opens; he also won the '56 Open at Oak Hill Country Club in Rochester, N.Y. Before leaving competitive golf in the early 1960s, he'd added a Masters title among his 40 professional victories, won the Vardon Trophy for the tour's lowest scoring average in 1956, and played on three victorious U.S. Ryder Cup teams.

A former dentist, Middlecoff was inducted into the PGA World Golf Hall of Fame in 1986 and the Tennessee Golf Hall of Fame in '92.

The death in early September of BILL SHANKLAND, 91, who twice contended for the British Open among a life of sporting accomplishments, nearly went without notice in his native Australia. Shankland also represented his nation in boxing, swimming, rugby league and rugby union, making him one of the most well-rounded athletes of the century.

When his career in those sports came to an end, he began studying as a professional. He rose quickly in the game, placing third in the '39 Open at St. Andrews, then in '47 at Hoylake he made a double bogey at the 54th hole and tumbled from the lead to fourth behind Fred Daly.

Two of his three sons, Craig and Dale, have become teaching pros in the U.S.

Provisionals

An incorrect photograph accompanied the Great Golf Hole feature in September.

It was of the 10th hole, not the 17th hole (above), at The Reserve (Fought Course) in Aloha, Ore.

A photo accompanying the Women's APL story ("Silver Spooner," August) was misidentified. The photo was of Natalie Wong, not Angie Yoon.

The facility type of Riveridge Golf Course was incorrectly stated in a "Shag Bag" item in August. It is a public course, not a municipal facility.

A course architect at Nelson and Haworth was misidentified in a story on the design firm ("Road Warriors," August). He is Mark Miller, not Matt Mitchell.