HART'S WYMAN IS ALL GROWN UP.

Byline: DAVE SHELBURNE Golf

Mark Miller, Jason Gore, Shane O'Brien, Carlos Robledo, Jason Semelsberger, Brandon Wallace, Charlie Smith . . .

The list of outstanding golfers who have gone through the Hart High program reads like an all-star leaderboard stretching throughout the decade-long tenure of coach Dennis Ford.

You can add another name this season and maybe wind up underlining it. Ryan Wyman, the once-diminutive short-game specialist who has mushroomed from a 5-foot-6 freshman into a 6-foot-1, power-driving senior, entered this week one stroke under par for the 18-1-1 Indians and is on pace break the school season record of 2 under par.

That would be the record set by Gore, the most successful alumnus of one of the state's most successful programs. The 1992 Hart graduate and 1997 Walker Cup participant was a state runner-up in high school, won Pac-10 individual titles as a freshman and sophomore at Arizona, led Pepperdine to the NCAA team title as a senior, then won state amateur, state open and Pacific Coast titles. He shot a first-round 68 as a qualifier in this year's PGA Tour Buick Invitational.

Wyman doesn't have that kind of resume, but this focused 18-year-old can shoot. He included his third hole-in-one in his second 5-under-par 56 last week at Vista Valencia in leading the Indians to a remarkable 1-under-par team score - the best in Hart history and one of the best scores in relation to par by any area team ever.

Wyman got started in golf accidentally at age 13 while recuperating from knee ligament damage suffered playing baseball - his first love.

``I couldn't run for four months,'' he said. ``So I started going to Vista Valencia with my dad and I fell in love with the game.''

Wyman, blessed with the kind of soft hands that made him a starting shortstop in youth baseball, became a regular at the Santa Clarita Valley executive course, where he would spend countless hours chipping and putting. By the time he arrived at Hart, he had a short game so refined, Ford said, ``He could get up and down from the bottom of a well.''

The current Wyman doesn't have to rely on his short game as much as the smaller version used to - the Long Beach State-bound senior now averages nearly 285 yards with his driver. But those long-honed greenside skills continue to pay confidence dividends in a game where success for most is rooted in confidence.

Another change this year is Wyman's role as team leader: He's now the Old Man, one of the few four-year varsity players in Hart history. And like former four-year Hart veteran Semelsberger - a current UCLA standout and 1997 U.S. Open finalist - Wyman tries to help out the youngsters.

``I remember my freshman year we had a great team,'' Wyman said, ``and Jason was a senior. The first week of practice he told me `I want to be like a mentor for you, or an older brother.' It was really cool that he did that for me. He showed me how to play under pressure by watching him.''

These days, Wyman is playing big brother to Brian Edick, Hart's latest bright freshman prospect - who shot even-par 61 in that sub-par team round last week.

``It feels good,'' Wyman said of his turn at mentoring. ``I try to treat him the same way Jason treated me. I just tell him when he plays bad to not think about the day before or even the hole before - but just to go on, one shot at a time.''

As for himself, Wyman prefers not to think too much about chasing Gore's record: ``I don't want to get caught up in it,'' he said, ``but it's in the back of my mind.''

His pursuit gets tougher this weekend, when Wyman plays in a prestigious, invitation-only American Junior Golf Association tournament in Arizona.

Then again, he once shot 2-under-par 70 from the back tees at Valencia Country Club, which handed the PGA touring pros all the grief they could handle in last year's Nissan Open.

Gore's record has outlasted the biggest guns Hart's premier program could throw at it for seven years. But it might not survive the former littlest Indian this season.

Golf notes: Oakmont Country Club is off the LPGA Tour schedule for the second time in two decades following last week's decision by promoter AJ Sports not to renew its contract with the Glendale private course.

Oakmont, which hosted the Valley of the Stars Championship (formerly called the Los Angeles Women's Championship) the past three years, also was the site of the GNA Classic, then GNA/Glendale Federal Classic from 1985-87.

LPGA commissioner Ty Votaw, who hopes to keep the $650,000 February tour stop in the Los Angeles area, said El Dorado GC in Long Beach and Industry Hills were early considerations for a new site but didn't work out.

``Any new golf course we have to approve,'' Votaw said.