WOODS' NEW GOAL IS HELPING KIDS.

Byline: DAVE SHELBURNE Golf

Throughout his 10 seasons on the PGA Tour, Tiger Woods' biggest golf impact in his native Southern California has been victories - in the 1999 and 2003 Buick Invitational, in the 2003 and 2004 WGC Accenture Match Play Championship and at his own invitational tournament in Thousand Oaks, where he won the Williams World Challenge in 2001 and the Target World Challenge last year.

That impact rating could change in less than two months, with the Feb. 10 opening of the Tiger Woods Learning Center in Orange County. It will be the realization of a dream the former Western High of Anaheim and Stanford golf standout has had since he first played on the PGA Tour in 1996.

``I really wanted to do it once I got out here,'' he said last week at Sherwood Country Club, site of his annual fund-raising tournament for the Tiger Woods Foundation - which helps support his Start Something program and his learning center, scheduled to open the Friday before the Feb. 16-19 Nissan Open at Riviera Country Club.

Both programs were designed to help youngsters, but not necessarily in golf.

``We're not here to produce great golfers. We're trying to produce great citizens,'' Woods said early during construction of his learning center, located on the old driving range at Dad Miller Golf Club in Anaheim, where Woods played during his four years of high school golf.

The project, which involves constructing a new driving range and re-routing the back nine holes, will produce a 35,000 square-foot building with seven classrooms, a computer lab and a 250-seat auditorium. The 14-acre learning center also will include a practice area and putting green, but the emphasis is on learning.

``I wanted to have something tangible that kids could touch, kids could feel, they could be inside of,'' Woods said at Sherwood. ``I thought what we were doing by going around the country and trying to inspire youth was great. ... But I didn't think we were doing enough. We were kind of a circus, coming in for one week and we're gone. What about the other 51 weeks?

``I wanted to do something that was going to be there permanently. Something we could call home as a foundation for kids to come in, for kids to learn and grow, and I wanted them to create their own programs. The entire curriculum is based on their wants, their desires and their needs.''

Woods estimates more than three million youth nationwide have enrolled in Start Something, a five-year-old program offering free character education, career exploration and service learning.

That program encourages kids 8-17 to identify their goals and begin taking steps toward achieving them, in the process learning to identify the personal values, interests and talents needed for goal achievement.

``Our dream for Start Something was to provide the encouragement and guidance children needed to develop self-confidence, a positive attitude and the belief that they can make a difference in the world,'' Woods said.

His learning center gives Woods the opportunity to help promote that kind of confidence and personal growth ``where I grew up and where it all started.''

--He'll be missed: Mike Peck, assistant editor of the Southern California Golf Association's Fore Magazine for nearly 20 years, died Friday at age 62, three days after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage.

Peck, a familiar figure at SCGA events since 1986 with his ever-present camera, contributed thousands of photographs and articles to the bimonthly publication, which has one of the nation's largest golf-magazine circulations, at 160,000.

One of Peck's favorite events was the 1994 SCGA Amateur Championship won by Woods at Hacienda Golf Club. His action photograph of Woods and an autographed scorecard of Woods' course-record third round of 62 were prized possessions Peck hung proudly on his office wall at the North Hollywood-based SCGA.

Hundreds of other current or past area amateurs, including SCGA or state champions Craig Steinberg, Tim Hogarth, Jason Gore, Jeff Sanday, Charlie Wi and Roy Moon, have been subjects of photographs or articles by Peck, who was sports editor of the Antelope Valley Press for 10 years before joining editor Bob Thomas on the Fore Magazine staff.

``I'll miss him as a wonderful colleague,'' Thomas said, ``but more important, I'll miss him as a dear friend.''

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BY DAVE SHELBURNE