An 18-Hole Course in the Good Life With the Shakespeare of Golf

It is a golden winter afternoon in North County. The good life is all around me.

I am talking golf with Arnold Palmer. I am in heaven.

This is how it must have felt to discuss iambic pentameter with Shakespeare. I have fantasized about meeting Palmer.

“Arnie, what club do you use if you have a 175-yard approach shot over water, to a green surrounded by sand?”

“Myself, I use a 7-iron, test for wind direction and then let it drift gently right to left, coming in slightly pin-high. How about you?”

“Usually a 4-iron. If that doesn’t work, I just pick the sucker up and throw it.”

Palmer is the guest of honor at a wine-and-cheese reception put on by the developers of Aviara, the 1,000-acre residential and resort development under way in Carlsbad. It’s the former Hunt Brothers project, overlooking Batiquitos Lagoon.

Palmer’s firm designed Aviara’s 18-hole golf course, set to open next November. If you believe Palmer himself did the heavy lifting, you also believe Joe DiMaggio does the cooking at his restaurant in San Francisco.

The golf course was a major inducement for the Carlsbad City Council to approve the overall project. In a slow-growth world, golf courses have emerged as one of the few politically popular land uses.

And not a moment too soon.

The 1989 Places Rated Almanac gave San Diego County a lowly “C” for the quality and quantity of its golf courses but a “B” for its bowling alleys. I ask you: Would you rather live in a place known for its golf courses or its bowling alleys?

Have you ever heard of any upscale male bonding accomplished at a bowling alley? Any important business deal consummated during Moonlight Lanes?

Luckily our public servants have responded to the backswing of our discontent.

The Board of Supervisors is allowing country club courses in the pristine San Dieguito River Valley. Carlsbad hiked the hotel-motel tax to finance two municipal courses, one full size, one pitch-and-putt.

The councils in Escondido and San Diego just approved a controversial land swap so a course can be built near Lake Hodges. Oceanside is even trying to eradicate the snakes on the back nine of its muni course.

Sure, the environmentalists carp about the profligate use of water and pesticides at many courses and damage to the habitat of the black-tailed gnatcatcher and the like. A friend of mine calls these people enviro-fascists.

But there is just something about golf courses that politicians like.

Carlsbad Mayor Bud Lewis asks Palmer to autograph an Aviara golf visor. So does Councilwoman Ann Kulchin.

“It’s my husband’s Christmas present,” she says.

I could tell you all the things that Arnie told me about curing my slice and avoiding those three-putts. I could but I won’t.

Check your Elizabethan history books. You won’t find a lot of guys who wrote memoirs about their private discussions with the Bard.

Group Rates Political Pet Peeves

Since you asked . . .

* The California political action committee for animals has issued its annual report card for state legislators.

Assemblywoman Lucy Killea (D-San Diego) got an “A.” She was pro-PAW PAC on everything but veal.

Killea’s opponent in the state Senate race, Assemblywoman Carol Bentley (R-El Cajon), got an “F.” She voted “right” on elephants and rain forest protection but “wrong” on pet shop regulation, sick puppies, lab animals and more.

“PAW PAC hopes its rating has some political bite,” explained lobbyist Virginia Handley.

* Yes, that was the Mrs. Fields slinging cookies at her two stores in downtown San Diego. Debbie Fields likes to make surprise inspections.

She also wants to ensure that customers know she’s real and not just a trademark. “I am not Betty Crocker,” she said.

* Press releases I never finished reading. From Harbor View Medical Center in San Diego:

“Very few women doctors choose to specialize in urology. There are probably only 75 in the United States, with perhaps 30 in private practice. . . .”

* An upscale car wash in Escondido set to open by New Year’s will have a fax machine in the waiting area. That way hard-driving car owners won’t miss anything back at the office.