SENIOR SCHEDULE A DISSERVICE TO PRINCIPAL PLAYER.

Byline: KAREN CROUSE

Gary Player's father toiled in a gold mine in Johannesburg, South Africa, and Player might have ended up doing the same if he hadn't gotten the opportunity to mine for gold on the PGA Tour.

Player was so appreciative of the chance to play golf professionally in the United States that when he won his first and only U.S. Open title in 1965, he promptly gave $20,000 of his $25,000 winner's check back to the United States Golf Association for the promotion of junior golf.

It was a gracious gesture by Player, to be sure. And yet 33 years later the USGA couldn't give Player so much as a scheduling break. As a result, Player, one of only two golfers to win back-to-back Senior Opens, will be conspicuous by his absence when the 19th U.S. Senior Open gets under way Thursday at Riviera Country Club.

Player's predicament is that he is the defending champion of the British Senior Open, which will be held next week. He holds that tournament in high regard even if the Senior PGA Tour leaves the British Senior off its schedule altogether and the USGA also blithely ignored it.

How else to explain scheduling one seminal Senior event right before another on a different continent? The only thing more absurd than that is the number of air miles Player would have had to log in order to compete in his 44th consecutive British Open, the U.S. Senior Open and the Senior British Open on successive weeks.

Player decided to go to England and stay there to save wear and tear on his 62-year-old body. Jack Nicklaus, 58, forced by a degenerative left hip to choose between the British Open and the U.S. Senior Open, went the other route, choosing the U.S. event even though it meant ending his streak of appearances in consecutive Grand Slam events at a mind-boggling 154.

It's ludicrous, making the likes of Player and Nicklaus select one Open over another the way they would an iron out of their bags. They're not between clubs, after all; they're in the midst of history. In April, Player became the oldest man to survive the cut at the Masters and Nicklaus nearly won his seventh green jacket, finishing in a tie for sixth.

Nicklaus and Player are among only four players to have won all four of golf's majors (joining Gene Sarazan and Ben Hogan). Player is the only golfer in this century to win a British Open in three different decades. If he feels an affinity for the British Isles that's on par with his love for the United States, well, you can understand why.

The charismatic Player's drawing power should have been no small consideration to the people running the show this week in L.A., given that Angelenos roundly ignored the last golf major that passed through town. The 1995 PGA Championship at Riviera attracted 60,000 fans over four days, which wasn't a mob by anyone's definition except, maybe, a Clippers season-ticket holder.

Tournament officials are hopeful 100,000 people will turn out this time to watch the 50-and-over set. Having Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer in the field will help, but there's no question it'd be a lot more compelling a ticket if Player came with the scenery.

``I'm so sad because I love Riviera and I love Los Angeles,'' Player said recently from Johannesburg. ``And of course I'm sad because I've won the U.S. Senior Open twice.''

Surely, the conflict that's keeping Player away could have been avoided. Unlike the U.S. Open, the U.S. Senior Open isn't locked into the same calendar spot. The tournament had a June starting date eight times in its first 18 years and a champion was crowned as late as August in 1988, the year Player successfully defended his title at Medinah Country Club outside Chicago.

USGA official Tom Meeks acknowledged Sunday there was some flexibility in choosing the dates. Indeed, there was talk of holding the tournament the first week in July, but Riviera officials balked because they wanted their club to themselves over the Fourth of July holiday. And USGA officials didn't press the issue, the memories still fresh in their minds of the tepid attendance in Cleveland two years ago when the Senior Open was contested July 4-7.

This year's Senior Open ought to have been held the last full week of June, directly on the heels of the U.S. Open in San Francisco (bumping a Senior PGA Tour contrivance called the Cadillac NFL Classic).

``I thought the USGA was very inconsiderate, taking the date it did,'' Player said.

Meeks said the USGA intended no slight to Player or the British Senior Open. But USGA officials had to know that by settling on this week, they were sacrificing Player. The writing was in the book Player penned 10 years ago.

In ``Golf Begins at 50,'' Player described winning the 1987 U.S. Senior Open at Brooklawn Country Club in Fairfield, Conn., with a record score of 14-under-par, then hopping a plane to get to England for the start of the U.S. Senior British Open three days later.

``The combination of jet lag, the change in weather and age caught up with me,'' Player wrote. ``I just wasn't myself in the British Senior. In fact, I was completely useless. The experience made me realize that at my age I can't expect to get on a plane, cross umpteen time zones and go straight out on a golf course and shoot subpar golf.''

Shame on the USGA for once again daring Player to try.