HOTBED OF GOLF; BIG FURNACE CREEK HAZARD: SOARING TEMPERATURE.

Byline: Dave Shelburne Staff Writer

The first thing you're absolutely, positively wondering when you step up to the No. 1 tee is how accurate were they when they named this course Furnace Creek?

It's not yet 5 a.m. on the second day of summer and already the air conditioner is churning in the pro shop. How hot can it get here?

``Easily in the high teens to 120-plus degrees in the summertime,'' said Jeff Knott, a visiting PhD who last year earned a doctorate in geology for his formation map work in the nearby Black Mountains. The lengthy groundwork, which once hospitalized Knott with dehydration, also left him curious about how a golf course could cope in such a hostile environment.

He had come back with clubs to find out and wound up pleasantly surprised.

``I thought it would be dry with bare spots in the fairways, especially in June,'' Knott said. ``But that wasn't the case at all. The course was great - very interesting, with a lot of textures that can give you a bad bounce but also a good bounce. It had a lot of character for a desert course - one you might call the ultimate desert course.''

Ultimate golf is definitely the early impression.

Two days after watching Payne Stewart win the U.S. Open and an hour before sunrise here, you stare at the bleak, baked countryside surrounding Furnace Creek and think Pinehurst might have been on a different planet.

Then, you look back at the course and find many things aren't really that much different from your regular course - not even that much less green.

Welcome to arguably the most-distinct golf site in the nation, a natural oasis where 60-year-old tamarisk cedars and date palms tower above fairways nurtured by natural springs that send nearly a million gallons of water through the course daily.

Don't be fooled by the greenery or water - the lakes, ponds or streams that are on or adjacent to six of Furnace Creek's 18 holes. It is hot here, so hot the land surrounding the course cracks noisily in some areas.

But heat isn't the only unusual feature.

Early-morning golfers - and there are no other kind during the summer in Death Valley - are apt to lose a ball to a foraging coyote on the hunt for breakfast near the water-guarded second green.

Hit a ball off the tightly cut, well-defined fairways and it might bounce off the hard-baked desert floor and into a kangaroo rat hole.

There are tales of bighorn sheep coming down from the valley's surrounding 1.8-billion-year-old rock formations to collapse and die on a Furnace Creek green.

There might also be golfers who feel they've died and gone to heaven on those greens, which are a better-barbered version of Furnace Creek's Bermuda fairways. Well-manicured and closely cut, the greens are fast but true and absolutely the highlights of the course.

Visitors will get to play only the front nine at Furnace Creek this summer, as course superintendent Dave Parkinson is in the process of resodding the back nine with new greens expected to be ready by November. That's prime time for Death Valley, with temperatures in the 80s. But summertime, with a lower rate of $25 for all you can play (cart an extra $10), can be enjoyable, too, providing you start early.

Tee off at 5 a.m. and you could get in 27 or even 36 holes before it gets too hot to play. The longer your shadow, the better your comfort zone. In any event, you can't play in the summer after 1 p.m., when the course closes because of the heat.

But keeping cool is not the most difficult thing at Furnace Creek.

``You can't believe how hard it is to grow grass out here,'' said head pro Rick Heitzig.

Amfac Corporation, which also operates the ranch and luxurious Furnace Creek Inn perched on a hillside above the course, made the grass-growing considerably easier two years ago with a $1.3 million renovation program.

Part of that work, which closed the course for five months, brought noted designer Perry Dye to Death Valley. He fine-tuned the tee boxes and restructured five holes on the par-70, 6,215-yard layout that now uses grass bunkers and mounds to good effect.

But the centerpiece of that 1997 money injection was a state-of-the-art irrigation system. The sophisticated, sensorized computer system delivers water on time and refrigerated wherever it is needed on the course. No one was happier about that than course superintendent Parkinson, who had too many recent memories of working with his crew at night, dragging hoses around the course and never getting enough water coverage on any one day.

Those planned irrigation improvements were the reason Parkinson took the job at the course, which had not been fully able to take advantage of its abundant water supply since it opened as a three-hole recreation for Furnace Creek Inn clients in 1930.

``It's been basically a Godsend,'' Parkinson said of the new irrigation system. ``It's been the single greatest improvement they've ever done on this course.''

Fixing Death Valley's summer heat will probably take nothing less than an ice age, but Furnace Creek can offer something else almost as cool: At 214 feet below sea level, golfers can be guaranteed that on this course they will shoot their lowest round ever.

CAPTION(S):

5 Photos

PHOTO (1--2--Color) John Maddox tees off on the first hole of the Furnace Creek golf course, where, because of the high Death Valley heat, rounds must be played in the morning.

(3--4) Most courses, with their trees and water hazards, are also animal sanctuaries of a sort. At Furnace Creek, players might have their golf balls stolen by coyotes or observe desert creatures like the roadrunner.

(5) A morning golfer - there are no other kind in Death Valley - chips onto the fifth green at Furnace Creek golf course.

John McCoy/Daily News