1995 77th PGA / RIVIERA : The BACK NINE

A look at golf’s backside, the stories you were never meant to see.

THE O.J. TOUR

The thousands of people who have taken the remarkably efficient bus rides from the parking lots at the V.A. Hospital to Riviera seem more interested in landmarks concerning the O.J. Simpson case than the golf tournament, according to several bus drivers.

“Bundy, Rockingham and Mezzaluna; all you hear are O.J. jokes,” said Steven Robinson, who has been making the eight-mile round-trip past those landmarks about 20 times a day for the past few days. “That’s all anyone is saying.

“One day, I was parked by the Brentwood Country Club ready to go to the staging area when a ball comes over the fence,” Robinson said. “This runner comes by, picks up the ball and tosses it to me and says, ‘This is O.J.’s ball. Come back next week and I’ll throw you his knife.’ ”

NEVER-ENDING JOURNEYS

Bus driver Robinson specializes in sports transportation. He picks up and delivers various professional teams as well as sports tour groups. He finds golf groups the best behaved and really doesn’t mind football, baseball and basketball fans. There’s only one group he cringes at.

“Skiers are the worst,” Robinson said. “First, you’re on the bus with them for a few hours and they get pretty toasted and wasted and then they get pretty nasty. I can deal with the rest, just don’t give me skiers.”

Robinson says he doesn’t even mind the difficult-to-deal-with professional athletes, though “Some can be really arrogant.”

He named Gary Payton of the Seattle Sonics and Rickey Watters now of the Philadelphia Eagles as two of the less pleasant. Shawn Kemp of Seattle, Jerry Rice of San Francisco and Tony Gwynn of the San Diego Padres, he said, are three of the more delightful athletes.

GOOD, BAD, INDIFFERENT

The transportation situation at the tournament has certainly been a bright spot. Very few people have had to wait more than five minutes at arrival and 10 minutes at departure to get a shuttle. What could have been a nightmare has turned out rather well and not much of an inconvenience.

In fact, the tournament itself has gone relatively smoothly considering the scope of the task. But it’s not perfect.

“Try and find a bathroom around the 18th hole,” said Georgeann Guglielmo. “I mean there are some for people with special [clubhouse] passes. But it’s the 18th hole. Shouldn’t there be a bathroom around the 18th hole?”

Georgeann and her husband, Mike, live in Temecula and travel to about six golf tournaments a year.

“We’ve spent about $400 for tickets and we can’t bring in our lawn chairs,” Georgeann added. “And I don’t like to sit on the ground. This is terribly overpriced.”

Mike, however, said they were both having a good time and he didn’t think there were a lot of problems.

1995 PGA CHAMPIONSHIP*

When does good mean bad? When the golfers are shooting the lights out at a major. The low scores are leaving PGA officials a little red-faced. “You hate to see this thing become a folly,” said tour veteran Hale Irwin. “But, unfortunately, it looks like they’ll always have an asterisk after this one.”

PRICE GOUGE, PART III

It’s back to the PGA Merchandise shop for today’s overpriced items. How does an $11 coffee mug sound? Or do you have a hankering for a $3 water bottle strap? Then there is the $22 money clip, providing you have any money left after leaving the store. Actually, while the prices are ridiculously high, they are comparable to other price-gouging sports events. It’s when you compare them to real world that you can see the difference.

PUBLIC RELATIONS 101

In the quest to give you a taste of the underbelly of a major golf tournament the past few days, this space has irritated a few people. But sometimes you can tell a lot about an organization in how it handles adversity. On Friday, it was pointed out how one Riviera member, with a player’s parking pass, had a very close parking spot in the handicapped zone. After that, a Times reporter was snubbed by some Riviera members and told by one, “Take a hike, go work for the Star.”

On Saturday, In N Out was cited for high prices and lack of menu substitution. It responded by offering to set up The Times’ PGA coverage staff with a special-order lunch of whatever it wanted.

We declined both invitations to “take a hike” and a lunch of double-doubles. But from a public relations standpoint, which approach do you think leaves a better taste in someone’s mouth?