RIVIERA'S SIXTH HOLE: CALL IT ENTRAPMENT.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

If you're coming to watch the Nissan Open at Riviera Country Club in the next four days, you really have two choices.

You can follow Tiger Woods around the course and enjoy golf at its most sublime. Wear thick-soled shoes; it's a long walk. Don't forget your elbow pads; Tiger's gallery will be more crowded than the Lincoln Bedroom. And pack a lunch; a cheeseburger here costs $5.25.

Or you can plant yourself next to the sixth green and enjoy golf at its most ridiculous.

The sixth hole at Riviera may be the most striking piece of sports architecture in Los Angeles and it's certainly the funniest. It looks benign on the scorecard. A 170-yard par 3. Piece of cake.

Look closer. Look at the center of the bi-level green.

If Riviera isn't the only major U.S. golf course with a bunker smack in the middle of a green, it definitely was the first.

The course designer, a man with the conventional name of George C. Thomas Jr., must have had a bit of the devil in him when he thought this one up in 1927. As if it's not hard enough to attack a hole that has tall eucalyptus trees flanking the right side - protecting the expensive homes south of the course - a claw-shaped bunker guarding the front of the green and a sycamore leaning over the left fringe.

If you get the ball on the green, and unless you have the control of a Tiger, you have a good chance of winding up on the opposite side of the bunker from the flag. Or in the bunker.

Given the alternatives, says Riviera historian George Shackleford, ``you'll hear guys begging for it to get in the bunker.''

For Riviera members and other amateur players, winding up on the wrong side of the sand means an almost automatic bogey - or worse. They've got to putt around the trap and then putt at the hole.

For the pros playing here this week, there's some hope of par, because they're allowed to chip over the beach. But if the hole is cut in the right-hand side of the green, as it was during Wednesday's pro-am round, a chip from the left side travels downhill and is hard to stop close.

Two years ago, when the PGA Championship was held at Riviera, the hole was cut to the left all four days. By the end of the tournament, the right was a field of divots. Ernie Els led on the final day before missing the green to the left and bogeying the sixth. That started his slide to third place. John Daly cut a foot-long divot out of the green and still made 5.

The sixth derailed L.A. Open contender Bobby Locke in '48.

``I've never taken a wedge to get it over,'' says Mark O'Meara, the hottest golfer of the new season. ``I think one time I (hit a tee shot to the wrong side). I think I just putted around it and made bogey. I'm kind of a picky guy. I like things neat and tidy.''

Wednesday afternoon, most of the amateurs missed the green to the right, apparently intimidated by the bunker. One shot clattered off the roof of a house and rattled around the lawn furniture. It could have been worse.

It could have been on the green.

One of the pros, David Ogrin, left his tee shot on the wrong side of the green. Between his ball and the hole was the three-foot fringe on the right edge of the bunker. He could have chipped. He could have putted to the right.

He looked over the situation from behind the ball. He looked it over from one side. Then, smiling, he lined up a putt around the left of the bunker, hoping the contour of the green would slingshot the ball toward the hole.

``I want you to tend the pin,'' Ogrin said to his caddy, and he laughed.

The 50-foot putt ended up 20 feet from the hole. Ogrin two-putted from there.

Bogey.

By the time the Nissan Open ends Sunday, the pin will be in the left side of the green. It's a flatter putting surface, but a smaller target.

``This could be a pivotal hole Saturday or Sunday, when officials place the pin to the left of the bunker,'' Tom Watson says.

It's a great place to be today and Friday, too. For one thing, the hole is so short, you can watch the tee and the green with the naked eye. For another, the sixth is adjacent to the fifth green, the seventh tee and the 16th green. So there's always something going on.

Mostly, what's going on is the world's best players are squirming. If Tiger is so good, he'll find a way to birdie from beyond the beach.

That's the joy of six.

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Photo

Photo: Yes, that's a sandtrap in the middle of the sixth green at Riviera Country Club, where pros and amateurs alike have traditionally had fits trying to maneuver around.

Myung J. Chun / Daily News