‘The Wick’: 100,000 Golfers a Year Can’t Be Wrong

Age suits Willowick Municipal Golf Course.

The mature sycamores and black acacias that line the generous fairways of Orange County’s oldest public course give the landscape a distinct contour and character. The Bermuda grass, toughened by decades of use, is even and lush.

The Wick, as the regulars call it, doesn’t dare you with dangerous ponds and Teflon greens. Instead, the links by the Santa Ana River challenge you like a confident veteran who has a thing or two to teach.

Plenty of duffers and hackers are lured by the Wick’s mostly straight and mostly flat 18 holes, but they leave humbled once they tally up their scores.

Bobby LeClaire of Fountain Valley, who has a respectable handicap of 10, has played the Wick since 1967. He has a simple strategy on how to tackle the course.

“Don’t get in the rough. Stay in the fairway,� he said with a sly grin as he waited to tee off one recent morning.

Anything else?

“And have a good short game.�

Like LeClaire, most who play the Santa Ana course are regulars, says manager Dan Donovan, whose family has operated the course since 1975 on a lease from the city of Garden Grove.

Good Investment

Donovan says Willowick opened in 1928, but he is not sure of its full history. A 1981 city memo says Garden Grove, which is a pitch shot away from the sixth hole, bought the course in 1964 for $3 million from a man named George K. Thompson.

It turned out to be a good investment. More than 100,000 rounds are played on the course each year, Donovan said.

Many of those rounds belong to LeClaire, 66, and his playing partners Greg Griese, 64; Pete Peterson, 66; Charlie Rea, 69; and Harry Cribbs, 72.

The friends met at Willowick 20 years ago and have been playing together since. They gather two or three times a week.

They come to the Wick, they say, as much for the familiar fairways as the familiar faces.

Tom Pulliam, the course’s starter, has been assigning tee times at the Wick for 28 years, nearly as long as Donovan, 29, has been alive.

“He can always get you out� on the course, Donovan said.

“Well, I don’t know about that,� said Pulliam, 59, a friendly and quiet type, “but I always do my best.�

The other starter, Kenny Kobayashi, has worked at the Wick for 22 years. Roy Haines, the groundskeeper, has been there 20 years.

“It’s just a good atmosphere,� LeClaire said.

Not that he doesn’t appreciate a ritzy, state-of-the-art course like Pelican Hill now and then.

“It’s really nice,� said LeClaire, who played the Newport Coast club a while ago.

“Each hole stands alone. You don’t really see any other hole but the one you’re playing, but it is way overpriced, especially on my budget.�

A weekend round of golf at Pelican Hill costs $250. Other public courses that have put Orange County on the country’s golf destination map, such as Monarch Beach Golf Links in Dana Point and Strawberry Farms in Irvine, cost more than $100 a round.

“They are so damn expensive,� said Rea, as he, LeClaire and the others played their round. “Old people, they know a hosing when they see one.�

A weekend round at the Wick is $35, $47 if you ride a cart, or $23 on weekdays, $35 with a cart. For that, you get no frills, but plenty of thrills.

The short course (6,063 yards) invites players to get greedy, to get delusions of Tiger Woods-like grandeur -- until they put the ball behind a tree or in one of the many bunkers and begin adding bogeys or worse to their scorecards.

But LeClaire and his gang were steady. Their swings, grooved over the years, rarely wavered. Golf requires composure.

Banter is another story.

“Hey, Harry!� shouted Griese as Cribbs got ready for a tee shot. “You know what they call cheating in school?�

“What?� Cribbs wanted to know.

“Cribbing!� Griese shouted.

The group roared with laughter.

“Oh, I’m all shook up now,� Cribbs, a dead ringer for TV actor Don Knotts, mocked back. He then hit a perfect layup shot.

Diverse Duffers

The boisterous group met at the Wick’s old bar as middle-aged men. Peterson and Rea worked for the city of Santa Ana as traffic engineers. LeClaire did photo processing for McDonnell-Douglas.

Cribbs was a building inspection consultant. And Griese, a former football coach, was Olivia de Havilland’s baby in “Gone With the Wind� when he was 11 days old.

“Best thing he ever did in his life, and he can’t even remember,� Peterson ribbed.

“Oh, I remember,� Griese joked.

There were other members who have come and gone, a disparate group of men linked by their love of the game.

One was Jerry Severson, a bear of a man and a bouncer by profession who had a long swing and a short temper.

He lost his left leg to diabetes, but could still bomb a drive past anyone. He had a heart attack last year at the age of 60, right there on the first hole.

“He left his second shot short of the green,� LeClaire recounted. “He skulled the chip and fell over.�

They buried his ashes on the No. 2 hole.