RIVIERA LONGER, BUT HOW MUCH BETTER?

Byline: Dave Shelburne Staff Writer

First, it was the addition of rough at the Masters, where none had existed before 1997. This year, Augusta National will be 300 yards longer.

More change was on display last week at the Buick Invitational in La Jolla, where Torrey Pines celebrated its 45th anniversary by stretching its South Course 539 yards to maximum of 7,607. The 7,568 yards it played for the pros made Torrey Pines South the third-longest course on the PGA Tour and it further challenged the field with an additional 29 bunkers.

This week at the Nissan Open, the touring pros get another new-look old course - or perhaps more accurately, a real old look at an old course. Seventy-five-year-old Riviera Country Club, host to the 1948 U.S. Open, two PGA Championships and a U.S. Senior Open, has toughened considerably during a project designed to restore the original intent of holes wiped out by a 1939 flood.

Altered tee boxes have added real or effective length as well as trouble on the fifth, eighth, ninth, 12th and 13th par-4 holes at Riviera, No. 8 also reclaimed its long-lost split fairway. Number 7 - another par-4 - has added right-side out-oounds barranca and brought back a distinctive and defining fairway bunker that straddles the left middle of that dogleg-right fairway for nearly 50 yards.

``It is now the toughest drive on the course,'' said Riviera head professional Todd Yoshitake, ``because not only do you have to hit a fade, but there is a hump in the fairway right at the preferred landing area. If you land the ball on the left side of the hump, it could careen into the bunker. If the ball hits on the right side of the hump, it could kick out of bounds into the barranca.''

They called it Tiger-proofing at Augusta National when that venerable site was altered less than a year after 21-year-old Tiger Woods burned the '97 Masters field for a tournament-record 18-under-par 270 while winning by a record 12 strokes.

At Torrey Pines, where Rees Jones earned the approval of Woods and many other pros last week for the lengthening and strengthening of that scenic public course, the endeavor took place with an eye toward winning a U.S. Open bid, perhaps as soon as 2008.

At Riviera, Tom Fazio was brought in to bring the course back to the specifications in force when the George Thomas-designed layout opened in 1927.

In each case, consideration was given to encroaching technology, which has turned the game into a long-drive and short-iron sport on many holes in recent years - notably Riviera's once and again ferocious ninth. That uphill test now stretches 458 yards and brings two large fairway bunkers back into play as well as necessitating more mid-iron shots to a severely sloped green, the way Thomas originally intended.

Can the adjustments keep the courses ahead of improving equipment? Is that necessary, or is golf's current high-tech wave merely the player-side equivalent of the industrial revolution? Should records and winning scores fall where they may and only the fittest survive?

Is longer wronger? It depends who's fielding the question. John Daly, who has won 10 of the past 11 PGA Tour driving titles and has a 321-yard driving average this year, loves longer courses - the longer the better.

``Right now I do,'' he said last week before shooting the second-best first-round score on Torrey Pines lengthy South course. ``But you ask me in 10 years when I'm 45, I may change my mind. I do. I like it. Courses that can make it longer to keep up with technology, I think it's great. A lot of golf courses, you can't. There's not a lot of room to make them longer. But sort of keeping up with technology, I think that's great.''

Another notable long hitter, six-time major champion Woods, also liked the longer Torrey Pines South.

``I do like it,'' Woods said. ``And the changes are definitely more for the way the game is changing. Guys are getting longer and stronger.''

Jeff Sluman is skilled enough to have won the 1988 PGA Championship in his fifth full season on tour. But at 5-foot-7 and 140 pounds, this youthful-looking, 44-year-old pro, who is sometimes outsized by the juniors he instructs in Nissan Open clinics at Riviera, is no threat to challenge Daly or Woods for distance. Nor is Sluman a fan of the trend toward making courses longer. Especially just longer.

``I think it's a knee-jerk reaction, to tell you the truth,'' he said. ``And as they did it (at Torrey Pines) it doesn't take a whole lot of imagination to make every hole 480 yards and say you have a difficult golf course.

``What takes imagination is No. 10 at Riviera, for example. That is a classic short par-4 that has no water, no out-oounds and you can make 5 or 6 there in a heartbeat. It's 311 yards. But the designers today, they don't seem willing or able to design holes like that.''

Bob May sides with Sluman.

``Length doesn't make a golf course hard, rough does,'' said May, who dueled eventual winner Woods in a memorable playoff at the 2000 PGA Championship. ``I just think a lot of people are getting caught into making golf courses really long to try and make it tougher, and I don't think they're going in the right direction.''

Sluman says the trend toward longer doesn't necessarily take shorter-hitting shot-makers out of contention.

``If they take golf courses real long but give you avenues to get to all the pins, that's fine,'' he said. ``But when they take the golf courses and make them real long and then raise the greens and put bunkers (that) force carries over the left side and right side of the green, that hurts. It definitely puts a lot of the field out of contention. You've got these little areas you've got to land it, and you're trying to hit a 3- or 4-iron and the longer hitters may be hitting 5 or 6. That's a huge advantage.''

The pros will get to test refurbished Riviera this week, when many will be seeing the alterations for the first time.

``It's a great golf course,'' Sluman said. ``They've already had majors there. So why do they need to do anything different? It's proven itself.''

Only time will tell if technology will trample history in this game, but defending Nissan Open champion Robert Allenby, for one, likes the course's chances at Riviera, where Lanny Wadkins' tournament record of 20-under-par 264 has stood up for 17 years.

``It is such an awesome golf course,'' said Allenby, who outlasted Sluman and four others in a playoff last year. ``I do not think it matters if you'do not change it dramatically. Lengthening tees and stuff like that, that is fine. That is just reality today.''