Pga International Golf Show

More than 10,000 buyers, sellers and manufacturers of golf equipment are expected at the Professional Golfers' Assn. of America's annual PGA International Golf Show at the Anaheim Convention Center for three days beginning Sunday. The show is particularly important for Southern golf resorts and shops preparing for their winter season, said Arnold Billingsley, executive vice president of Performance Oriented Sports Equipment in La Mirada.

More than 10,000 buyers, sellers and manufacturers of golf equipment are expected at the Professional Golfers' Assn. of America's annual PGA International Golf Show at the Anaheim Convention Center for three days beginning Sunday. The show is particularly important for Southern golf resorts and shops preparing for their winter season, said Arnold Billingsley, executive vice president of Performance Oriented Sports Equipment in La Mirada.

A look at upcoming tournaments in the region or major events involving top regional players: SEPTEMBER * 5: U.S. Senior Amateur qualifying, Oak Valley GC, Beaumont. * 5: Southern Area Fostercare Effort (SAFE) tournament, Strawberry Farms GC. Cost is $220, format is team scramble. Information: (714) 939-3090. * 10-12: PGA International Golf Show, Las Vegas. * 11-12: SCGA Senior Amateur Championship, Mesa Verde CC. * 12: American Lung Assn. tournament, PGA West Nicklaus Course, La Quinta.

Kelly Crawford has been named women's golf coach at UC Irvine, the school announced Tuesday. Crawford, who coached last year at Portland State, will be the first women's golf coach at UC Irvine, which will begin competition in 2001-02. A 1990 graduate of Sacramento State, Crawford played the LPGA Tour in 1992. AMATEUR HOUR The Junior Amateur Golf Scholars' inaugural tournament will be Dec. 21-22 at California Country Club in the City of Industry.

"Many are called, but few are chosen." That's a pretty good description of professional golf. Making it on any of the tours is becoming one of sports' toughest tasks. Senior PGA Tour veteran Chi Chi Rodriguez thinks it has reached the point where it is extremely difficult for African-Americans or Latinos to make the grade. "Lee Trevino and I were poor," Rodriguez said, "but we became golfers because we had a chance to become caddies. Caddies are almost as extinct as the dinosaur.

Baseball can take a giant step backward by accepting the proposal that will increase the number of playoff games, but decrease those available to television viewers in their entirety. . . . Only one of the two league championship series would be telecast in each market until the possible sixth and seventh games, when the starting times would be staggered. . . . Since their inception in 1969, many league championship series have been more exciting than the World Series. . . .

Now hear this. You are a golfer if you know that . . . * Cavity-backed has nothing to do with either tooth decay or general dentistry. * In the periodic table of elements, titanium is Ti. * A liquid elastomer casting process has to do with making a golf ball, not with the selection of actors. * The new seamless Hump concerns a steel shaft and is not a new breed of camel.

The word started leaking out in May, though anybody who had already hit a ball down that long, narrow, hazard-fraught par-five called Wall Street had an inkling. Times were getting tougher for golf club, ball and apparel manufacturers, in part because the industry had hit what LiquidMetal Golf Corp. President John Hoeflich called a "once-in-a-decade kind of bump in the road." "It's the result of not having anything new to sell," Hoeflich added.

Maxfli Golf is excited about its new Maxfli Belt Bag. A press release trumpets the bag, which reduces the weight carried by the back and shoulders and shifts it to the hips, as "innovative" and "revolutionary." A natural, in other words, to be shown off at the PGA International Golf Show, which runs Tuesday through Thursday in Las Vegas. But the bag won't be there, and neither will Maxfli. The Greenville (S.C.

We know all about Jesper Parnevik, the Swedish Spaceman, who lost the 1994 British Open because he had no clue what was happening since he never checked the leaderboard and lost in '97 when he wore Popsicle purple pants, a too-tight shirt and played the last six holes more like somebody who showed up to paint your house than a major championship winner.