GOLFER SAM WILL BE DRIVING WITH THE PROS.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

Sam Geta was nice about it. He didn't yell or complain. He just rolled up to the guys playing slowly in front of his group at Woodley Lakes Golf Course on Friday afternoon and asked if they could pick it up a little.

They were four young, burly guys riding in carts. Sam's 50 -- a paraplegic who lost the use of his legs in a motorcycle accident when he was 34.

And the young guys were holding him up, playing too slowly.

They stood on the tee of the fifth hole, having a beer and watching model airplanes fly overhead from nearby Sepulveda Dam.

``Mind if we play through?'' Sam asked.

``Sure,'' one of them said, giving him the look he's seen so many times playing a round of golf at Woodley -- the only public golf course in the San Fernando Valley with a single-seat golf cart designed especially for paraplegics.

The look that said, ``Who is this guy and how's he going to hit that golf ball more than a few yards sitting strapped into a cart?''

Sam smiled, pulled out his driver, teed the ball up on a rubber tee from the driving range, and hit a 160-yard drive dead down the middle.

Then he turned around to see the second look he always gets. The one where their jaws drop.

``Damn,'' one of the guys said.

Yeah, damn.

It took more than four years after the July 1990 accident that left him a paraplegic -- ironically, on the same day President George H.W. Bush was signing the Americans With Disabilities Act -- before he stopped wallowing in self-pity and started thinking about sports again, Sam says.

He began playing a little wheelchair basketball and tennis, but what he really wanted to do was play golf again.

He was never a great golfer. On a good day, he shot in the middle 80s. But that was after only two years of playing, so he figured he had some talent.

He was still young enough to dream. Maybe he could get his game down into the low 70s by the time he turned 50, quit the real estate business and play on the seniors tour.

Sure, it was a dream, but Encino's Sam Geta was nothing if not a big dreamer his whole life.

Then that car turned in front of his motorcycle, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. Playing golf again -- even bad golf -- became just that, a big dream.

But here it is, more than 16 years later, and Sam Geta's rolling up to the first tee at Woodley Lakes on Friday afternoon to play one more practice round before driving down to San Diego today to play in the 2007 Buick Invitational Pro-Am tournament Monday.

When Sam found out that the Torrey Pines Golf Course, where the tournament will be held, had one single cart adapted for paraplegics like him, he wrote tournament director Tom Wilson, wondering if anyone was using it.

Wilson said no. Sam asked for the chance. Wilson e-mailed back and told him to come on down.

Sam will be the only paraplegic playing a round with one pro and three other amateurs before the actual tournament begins Thursday.

It's not the seniors tour, but it's a heck of a lot closer to that dream than he ever thought he'd get, Sam says.

He'll be playing a round of golf with the big boys at a pro tournament. Who knows, maybe even Tiger Woods, if he gets really lucky.

How great would that be, Sam says. This 50-year-old paraplegic from Encino playing with the great Tiger Woods -- joking with him to pick it up a little, he's slowing down play.

``This is the one place I feel completely in my element, on the golf course,'' Sam said Friday, teeing up on the first hole with Jim Johnson and Mel Davis -- a couple of guys he had just met at the starter's window.

They had no idea what to expect from this friendly guy strapped into a single-seat cart, pulling a lever that swung him around 180 degrees in his seat so he could address the ball and swing.

Sam threw a rubber tee and two balls down on the ground -- one extra ball in case he needed a mulligan (an extra shot). He didn't. He hit a 150-yard drive to the right, but with a clear shot at the green.

From the starter's window, Phil Riggs shook his head and smiled.

``He's a heck of a player in that chair,'' the supervisor of starters at Woodley said. ``Shoots in the low 100s, sometimes high 90s.''

Riggs has stood there and watched this scene dozens of times since Sam started showing up a few years ago to use the special cart in the shed no one else ever asked to use.

Watching other golfers scratch their heads wondering how this guy sitting in that cart was going to get any distance on the ball. Then watching their jaws drop.

``As far as I know, Sam's the only one who's ever used the cart,'' Riggs said. ``It takes some skill to use, and Sam has the skill.''

The cart's weight is distributed and its wheels designed so it can be driven onto the green without damaging the putting surface, Riggs said.

Maybe more paraplegics would play golf or take the sport up if all public courses in this city had one or two of these special carts available, Sam says.

But at a cost of about $8,500 each, there are only three in the entire city, one of them at Woodley.

``I think if more paraplegics knew the carts were available, there'd be more of a demand, and the city should provide them,'' Sam said, lining up a 10-foot putt for a bogey on the first hole.

He went on to shoot a 52 on the front nine before darkness set in. Sam never did see those big, slow guys who let him play through on the fifth hole finish their round.

``Probably still out there looking for their balls,'' he said, smiling.

You get the feeling that whoever Sam gets Monday as the pro in his group had better not take too much time lining up his putts.

dennis.mccarthy(at)dailynews.com

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Photo:

Sam Geta uses the Valley's only golf cart designed for handicapped players during a round at Woodley Lakes Golf Course. Geta has been invited to play as the only paraplegic golfer ever in the Pro-Am's Buick Open on Monday.

John Lazar/Staff Photographer