Golf Equipment

The internal affairs division of the Camden County Sheriff's Department is investigating a police report that a sheriff's officer was robbed of $300 in cash, his gun and his badge during an off-duty sexual encounter with a woman in the parking lot of a Camden motel. According to the report filed with Camden police four days after the Jan. 13 incident, sheriff's investigator Duane Cherry, 31, of Sicklerville, said he was in his car in Camden between 3 and 4 a.m. when he picked up a woman in her late 20s and parked in the lot of the Towne Park Motel at Eighth and Market Streets.

The Philadelphia region's largest golf retailer, Somerton Springs Golf Shops, will sell nine of its 19 stores to Golf Augusta Pro Shops, an expansion-minded chain based in Augusta, Ga. The acquisitions will give Golf Augusta about two dozen stores. Except for freestanding stores in Maple Shade and Cherry Hill, Somerton Springs will keep only its stores that are connected with driving ranges and golf courses. "I want to be able to focus on our facilities," said David Platt, president.

A couple of months ago, a Japanese businessman walked into a West Los Angeles golf shop and sank $11,000 into more than 1,300 Taylor Made metal woods. The next day, a second golfer from Japan cleaned out the rest of the store's Taylor Made stock for $3,000. "They were buying up the Taylors all over the city and selling them back in Japan at a big profit," said Jerry Ehrhart, a salesman and golf instructor for Walter Keller's Golf and Tennis Shop. "We keep products from Korea and Taiwan, but they insist on the U.S.-made stuff.

It was a golfer's heaven and hell, enjoyed and endured, with fun and frustration, birdies and bogies, slices, shanks, scaffles, and hooks and heat, with sweat and swearing, chips and chops, pulls and putts, and at the end, limps and laments. Volunteer golfers started swinging at 8 a.m. Monday and didn't finish until 8 p.m. at Doylestown Country Club to raise money for the Bucks County Unit of the American Cancer Society. Five of the golfers played 63 holes in those 12 hours, going around and around the par-72, 6,195-yard, hilly course, stopping only for a lunch of hoagies and hot dogs.

Jim Furyk shows almost no emotion on a golf course. But it was far different yesterday morning, when he met up with his father, Mike, and had a difficult time getting the words out. "He was really emotional when he came up and gave me a hug and said, 'Happy Father's Day,' " Mike Furyk recalled in the evening twilight behind the clubhouse at Olympia Fields Country Club. "Then he said, 'I just want to win this for you so bad.' " Several hours later, with his father and the only teacher he's ever had looking on, Jim Furyk captured the 103d U.S. Open, his first major championship, playing the consistent golf that has become his trademark, a style taught to him by his father.

Question: My circa 1880 handmade hickory-shaft, brass-headed lady's golf putter was a 16th-birthday gift to my mother. There's no maker's label. How much is it worth? F.H.B.I, Sonoma, Calif. Answer: Your putter has greater sentimental than monetary value, said dealer Morton W. Olman, co-author of Olman's Guide to Golf Antiques & Other Treasures of the Game (Market Street Press, $20 postpaid from Olman, The Old Golf Shop Ltd., 325 West Fifth St., Cincinnati, Ohio 45202; phone 513-241-7797)

It is a dilemma that often confronts golfers when an errant shot goes into the woods: Take the safe route through a big opening and move the ball laterally onto the fairway. Or take the high-risk shot through a tiny opening in the trees and go directly for the pin. Jim Beckett went for the pin. At least that's one description of a decision Beckett, 64, made back in the mid-1960s when he was doing engineering work for NASA in Florida. He had a safe and comfortable job with a promising future.

Sure, it's been a long, cold, snowy winter for golfers, but the staff of the Philadelphia Section PGA didn't spend any of it in hibernation. During the "off" season, the section had to come up with a new site for its championship and find a title sponsor. It had to comb the countryside for sponsors to support a 1993 schedule that swelled to 64 events. It had to search for a new tournament director. And it had to work out a new agreement with Variety Club to sustain a relationship that goes back almost two decades.

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. - Erik Compton describes himself as a dreamer, and that is an important trait to have for someone who has endured two heart transplants and still returned to golf, the game he loves. Compton, 30, a former all-American at Georgia, fulfilled a huge dream last week by qualifying for his first U.S. Open. He played his initial full 18-hole practice round Monday at the seaside Pebble Beach Golf Links and said he almost gotten dizzy looking around "just because it's so surreal.

Philadelphia Golf is looking for a few good women. The Malvern-based publication, now finishing its fifth year and with a circulation of 70,000, wants to expand beyond its hard-core golf base into a serious regional lifestyle magazine, according to publisher and advertising director Robert T. Dunkel. "What we need to do more of, at this point, is the lifestyle, the food, travel, fashion, homes - all the things that will bring more female readers to the magazine so that we will be able to attract more female consumer advertising," he said.

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. - Erik Compton describes himself as a dreamer, and that is an important trait to have for someone who has endured two heart transplants and still returned to golf, the game he loves. Compton, 30, a former all-American at Georgia, fulfilled a huge dream last week by qualifying for his first U.S. Open. He played his initial full 18-hole practice round Monday at the seaside Pebble Beach Golf Links and said he almost gotten dizzy looking around "just because it's so surreal.

It is a dilemma that often confronts golfers when an errant shot goes into the woods: Take the safe route through a big opening and move the ball laterally onto the fairway. Or take the high-risk shot through a tiny opening in the trees and go directly for the pin. Jim Beckett went for the pin. At least that's one description of a decision Beckett, 64, made back in the mid-1960s when he was doing engineering work for NASA in Florida. He had a safe and comfortable job with a promising future.

As long as Jack Nicklaus had consented to his full and undivided attention over the course of lunch, why not cut to the chase? Is he pulling for or against Tiger Woods to one day eclipse his mark of 18 major championship victories, regarded as the true measure of his greatness and a record believed to be safe and untouchable - until Woods came along. "For the game, which is far bigger than any individual, I think it's more important that records get broken and that the game continues to grow," Nicklaus said.

Jim Furyk shows almost no emotion on a golf course. But it was far different yesterday morning, when he met up with his father, Mike, and had a difficult time getting the words out. "He was really emotional when he came up and gave me a hug and said, 'Happy Father's Day,' " Mike Furyk recalled in the evening twilight behind the clubhouse at Olympia Fields Country Club. "Then he said, 'I just want to win this for you so bad.' " Several hours later, with his father and the only teacher he's ever had looking on, Jim Furyk captured the 103d U.S. Open, his first major championship, playing the consistent golf that has become his trademark, a style taught to him by his father.

The Philadelphia region's largest golf retailer, Somerton Springs Golf Shops, will sell nine of its 19 stores to Golf Augusta Pro Shops, an expansion-minded chain based in Augusta, Ga. The acquisitions will give Golf Augusta about two dozen stores. Except for freestanding stores in Maple Shade and Cherry Hill, Somerton Springs will keep only its stores that are connected with driving ranges and golf courses. "I want to be able to focus on our facilities," said David Platt, president.

The retail golf-club business in this country puts up the kind of numbers that would make even an NBA gazillionaire look up. Last year, according to the National Golf Foundation, Americans spent $2.2 billion on new clubs and more than $6 billion on all golf merchandise. One thing America's more than 20 million golfers spend relatively little money on, or time thinking about, is making sure their clubs fit. Are they the proper length, for instance? Do they sit behind the ball at the proper angle?

It was a golfer's heaven and hell, enjoyed and endured, with fun and frustration, birdies and bogies, slices, shanks, scaffles, and hooks and heat, with sweat and swearing, chips and chops, pulls and putts, and at the end, limps and laments. Volunteer golfers started swinging at 8 a.m. Monday and didn't finish until 8 p.m. at Doylestown Country Club to raise money for the Bucks County Unit of the American Cancer Society. Five of the golfers played 63 holes in those 12 hours, going around and around the par-72, 6,195-yard, hilly course, stopping only for a lunch of hoagies and hot dogs.

Glum gray clouds dumped cold sheets of water on the diamond. Tree limbs twitched in the brisk maritime breeze. Cowed by the elements, the Dutch ballplayers took refuge in the clubhouse canteen, where the second baseman already was yanking the Amstel beer tap. Yes, it was another typical spring-training day in Holland, the baseball headquarters of northern Europe, on the brink of a new season. There are no palm trees, no prying media, no slick agents, no big crowds, no big bucks.

If you have to beat somebody to win your club championship, who better than your best golfing buddy? That's who Bob Heindel beat Sunday when he captured his third title at Merchantville Country Club, edging Denny Fellona, 1 up, in closing out the match on the last of 36 holes. Heindel, 49, a Haddonfield resident who is an account manager for a mortgage company, came back from 4 down after Sunday's first nine holes. He parred the final hole, while Fellona failed to get down in par after landing in a sand trap.

Question: My circa 1880 handmade hickory-shaft, brass-headed lady's golf putter was a 16th-birthday gift to my mother. There's no maker's label. How much is it worth? F.H.B.I, Sonoma, Calif. Answer: Your putter has greater sentimental than monetary value, said dealer Morton W. Olman, co-author of Olman's Guide to Golf Antiques & Other Treasures of the Game (Market Street Press, $20 postpaid from Olman, The Old Golf Shop Ltd., 325 West Fifth St., Cincinnati, Ohio 45202; phone 513-241-7797)