NEW LOOK, SAME PLAY AT EL CAB.

Byline: DAVE SHELBURNE Golf

First-round U.S. Open qualifiers who advance to June 6 sectional play at El Caballero County Club will be treated to a new-look course, including refurbished bunkers and ponds as well as a new irrigation and drainage system.

Those who know El Cab best don't expect the 49-year-old Tarzana layout to play much differently than this Robert Trent Jones Sr.-designed jewel has the four previous times an Open sectional has been played there.

In other words, El Cab remains devilishly difficult, although it has become a little more forgiving in some areas.

``The course always plays tough,'' head professional Mark Taylor said of El Cab, which played to a par of 72 and yielded an average round of 70.2 by winners Annika Sorenstam and Se Ri Pak the three years the LPGA's Office Depot Championship was held there.

El Cab, which will play to a par of 71 and 6,830 yards for the sectional, has been similarly hard on Open hopefuls in qualifying tournaments in 1997, 1999, 2001 and 2003.

``We usually have one of the highest scores in sectional qualifying,'' Taylor said.

Whether that will happen again on the new-look El Cab remains a mystery to club veterans. Some think the course might play easier now, and others think it might be more difficult - but all believe it is better-looking.

Two-time club men's champion Ron Cherney suspects it will play harder, just because of fairway-bunker changes that have reduced the landing areas for drives on the ninth and 18th holes. The addition of a right-side bunker on No. 18, opposite an existing - and large - left-side bunker, forces long hitters to be accurate off the tee on that hole. It's the same on No. 9, where a right-side bunker has been moved 15 yards into the fairway, reducing what was a wide landing area for longer hitters.

``I think it's beautiful,'' Cherney said of the course, ``and I think it's probably a stroke harder.''

Club pro Taylor goes slightly in the opposite direction, because of reduced sloping on the 17th green and reworked bunkers with greater sand consistency that yield consistently better lies.

``With the changes to the green on No. 17 and the bunkers, it might play a little easier,'' he said.

The reshaping of the pond-fronted 17th green could have the biggest positive impact on scores, since the flatter green makes it harder to putt a ball into the water, as has happened in the past. The once-steeper-sloped green also occasionally sent seeming bunker-escape shots rolling into the greenside pond that became memorable to too many golfers for more than its beautiful stonework.

There's more reason to appreciate the beauty of No. 17 now, with the addition of a rock waterfall. Ponds abutting the fifth, ninth and 10th greens also have waterfalls, and bright white sand fills all the bunkers, which now play flatter because of a new, course-wide drainage system.

The edges of the original sand traps also have been restored to the rounded look Jones intended when he designed this near-half-century-old course, and those softened bunker borders might rival the waterfall ponds as the most distinctive feature at buffed-up El Cab. ``I don't think the changes are going to make it more difficult,'' Taylor said, ``but they definitely make it more beautiful.''

Much of what always has been hard about the course for tournament play remains just as hard: those firm, undulating greens and some uphill climbing that could test fitness for Open hopefuls who must walk 36 holes, possibly in hot June weather.

``The (uphill, 528-yard, par-5) 12th is the hardest to walk,'' said caddie Darin Blacher, who played golf at Grant High of Van Nuys in the late 1980s and usually hoofs two rounds every working day at El Cab.

If No. 12 is a good climb getting up to the green, the hiking gets steeper on that long putting surface, which rises sharply toward the back and likely will rate as one of the most difficult greens of the sectional, now that No. 17 has been tamed. The bunkers - with the exception of the new and moved ones that have squeezed the fairways on Nos. 9 and 18 - should be friendlier to returning sectional participants at El Cab.

``They're easier to get out of because you get mainly a flat lie with very consistent sand because of the new drainage,'' Taylor said.

El Cab veteran Gene Cofsky concurs.

``I'm a 22 handicap, and when I get into the sand now, I'm not panicked like I used to be,'' said Cofsky, who has been a club member since 1986.

Cofsky said the rain-delayed improvements, which began in October and will finish soon, have made El Cab a better course than the one that routinely drew raves from LPGA participants in the Office Depot Classics.

``I loved the course before, and I love it even more now,'' he said.

Helen Knight, who knows the course as well as anyone - she has been a member since El Cab opened in 1957, winning a record 39 women's club championships - especially likes how the new drainage system has improved the bunkers.

``We don't have the little swimming pools we used to every time it rained,'' she said.

CAPTION(S):

photo, box

Photo:

VIJAY SINGH

Box:

ON THE GREEN

BY DAVE SHELBURNE