Fairways

A Marine helicopter with four Marines aboard made an emergency landing on the 12th green of a local golf course while returning to Miramar Marine Corps Air Station after a day of training at Camp Pendleton. The pilot of the CH-46 landed the helicopter shortly after 10 p.m. Tuesday when a cautionary light went on. No golfers were playing at the Doubletree Golf Resort course. Marine maintenance personnel checked the craft Wednesday morning and deemed it safe to fly. By 9 a.m., the helicopter had resumed its flight and golfing was not interrupted, according to the pro shop manager.

The Movie: "Tin Cup" The Setup: Roy "Tin Cup" McAvoy (Kevin Costner), a driving range operator and born loser, makes a play for Molly Griswold (Rene Russo), whose interest in golf was ignited when she got involved with a slick pro, David Simms (Don Johnson). The Costume Designer: Carol Oditz, whose movie credits include "Higher Learning," "Last Exit to Brooklyn" and "Georgia."

This is life that should exist on the other side of the moon with no chance of ever being seen down here. Forget the United Way campaign. Support NASA and a one-way space shuttle capable of jettisoning the get-a-life-challenged people here, who willingly spent $15 a day to be demeaned and disappointed at the Isuzu Celebrity Golf Championship.

Sub-par rounds have been routine at the British Open with the favorable weather conditions--warm weather, minimal rough and hard-baked fairways. However, those same fairways can be treacherous. Just ask Curtis Strange, two-time U.S. Open champion. Strange finished early Sunday with a 74, and four over par for the tournament at 292. "The fairways are so dry and, if you're not used to it, it's like playing on Interstate 95 with pebbles on it," Strange said.

Golfers always are looking for gear to improve their game and life on the course. Following are new products for the airways and fairways. Most are available in area stores. Tough bag will travel: Traveling golfers are usually just a little nervous as they check their golf bag before a flight--air travel can be brutal on those precious clubs. Ogio's new rolling golf bag should take some of the trepidation out of the experience.

The white line of golf carts at the Sea Island Golf Club curled like a breaking wave on the nearby Georgia coast. I approached with a friend and veered, automatically, toward the passenger side. "No, you drive," he said. "I'll navigate." "I've never driven a golf cart," I said, in that championship golf whisper I learned from TV. "High time you did," said my pal, who lives on St. Simons Island.

In the recent controversy over the Fairway Building in Studio City I have been unfairly painted with the same brush as the developer of that building. On Aug. 24, The Times quoted Polly Ward, president of Studio City Residents Assn., saying a building about to be constructed at Ventura Boulevard and Blue Canyon Avenue, on land I partially own, would be similar to the Fairway Building. This is completely false. Our development consists of two buildings, not one contrived as two. Measured at the center, the front building rises 44 feet above the curb.

Seve Ballesteros, the dashing, audacious force of golfing nature who zoomed from a fishing village in northern Spain to five major titles, No. 1 in the world and a pioneer's role in golf's European surge of the 1980s, died early Saturday. He was 54. Ballesteros, who enjoyed such renown for his vivid shot-making that fellow pro Nick Faldo called him "golf's Cirque du Soleil," died of complications from brain cancer at his home in Pedrena, the town where he was born, his family announced on his website.

The Citee Golf Club on the outskirts of the capital's smoggy sprawl is a kelly green oasis surrounded by neatly trimmed hedges and rows of luxury villas. At $77,000, a family membership at the club costs about 16 times the annual salary of a typical Beijing resident. The 18-hole course, with its pink-shirted female caddies, had its "soft opening" in 2009, five years after the Chinese government declared a moratorium on golf course construction. The ban, imposed amid concern over the country's dwindling arable land, clearly hasn't stopped the boom in golf course construction in China.

Move-ins have begun into homes at The Fairways by 25 of the initial buyers in the first phase of development at the Wood Ranch, a master-planned project at the western entrance to the Simi Valley. The Fairways, planned to have 142 garden homes in 12 phases and 111 patio homes in seven phases, vary in price from $124,900 to $172,900 and range in size from 1,228 to 1,853 square feet. The homes adjoin two fairways of the Wood Ranch Golf Course.