DATE: Tuesday, June 10, 1997                TAG: 9706100424

SECTION: SPORTS                  PAGE: C1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: TOM ROBINSON

                                            LENGTH:   64 lines

TIGER'S BURNING BRIGHT - AND SO IS JUNIOR GOLF

Tigermania. It's a gathering storm . . . at Congressional Country Club outside Washington this week of the U.S. Open, when Tiger Woods Over America touches down . . . and at least one place locally, where they've pushed the golf equipment to the front of the store.

``There are kids in here all the time now,'' says Ryan Hester of the Play It Again Sports shop in Western Branch. ``They used to pass by the golf section. It's up front now, because that's the biggest part of the store.''

Is it Tiger doing that, inspiring kids, or their dads and moms to push them toward the game? Or is Woods an overexposed sportswear peddler with a cool name who happens to hit golf balls real far?

Getting a grip on Woods' influence upon our sports-playing youth is an inexact pursuit. But it seems something is happening here that is part of golf's strengthening magnetism, though Eddie Luke, the pro at Norfolk's Lake Wright Golf Course, is skeptical that a Tiger attack has people streaming to the links.

``I think it's a lot of hype. People are trying to build it up a whole lot more than it is,'' Luke says. ``Golf is a whole different game, a very expensive game. You eliminate a lot of clientele right at the beginning.''

It's expensive. It's boring, and kids want action. It's too difficult. Golf can be all this. Yet there is some reason that a new course is going up every time you turn around and that renovations are being demanded on existing ones.

There is some reason why more parents and kids are flocking to his driving range and putting green, says Glen Pierce of Stumpy Lake in Virginia Beach. ``And a lot more minorities are coming out,'' Pierce says. ``We're working up some junior clinics, which we really haven't had much in the past.''

Demand for lessons isn't necessarily up, Pierce says, but ``a lot of people are asking me what's the youngest we'll take them.''

In order to birth a litter of little Tigers? Maybe just to get them into college free.

``The real true juniors, 11 and 12 years old, that's where I'm seeing interest on the parents' side,'' Scott Oswald of Chesapeake Country Club says. ``Parents are putting two and two together. The know it can lead to a scholarship.''

No doubt many of these parents are baby-boomers who have turned in their softball cleats and tennis rackets for clubs. But what about the kids whose parents have never seen a golf club, or for that matter, see too little of their kids?

That's where a national program like Hook a Kid on Golf comes in. Portsmouth hopes to get it going next year, but Norfolk's recreation department has run it for a while now. And the two-week summer camp was attracting more kids each year B.T., Before Tiger, recreation supervisor Helen Gabriel says.

``If I do triple-fold the number of kids as last year, then I can say that increase is probably due to Tiger Woods,'' says Gabriel, who tutored 28 7- to-14-year-olds last summer. The program costs $100, but scholarships are available, says Gabriel, the better to help spread the good word.

``Especially at-risk youth, everything is geared to basketball,'' Gabriel says. ``They don't know how much fun golf can be until they play it.''

Like Oswald, Gabriel suspects Woods' greatest influence could be on the junior golfer who hasn't really committed himself and who now wants to emulate the 21-year-old Woods.

``I don't think kids under the age of 12 or 13 really know who Tiger Woods is,'' Gabriel says, ``and wouldn't care if they did.''

Blasphemy? I don't know. What's clear is that golf talk is front and center like never before, in the office, in the news, and in the stores.

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu