ON THE GREEN : HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS’ GOLF : Wrestler Is Grabbed by the Game of Golf

She went from the padded foam mat inside the gym to the artificial turf mat at the driving range, and now Amy Nadell isn’t looking back.

Once a wrestler for Esperanza, Nadell, a junior, gave up her singlet and head gear for a set of clubs and a pair of soft spikes.

Nadell, who played recreational golf for two years before getting serious last spring, now shoots in the mid-40s for nine holes and has played her way into the Aztec top four.

Along with freshmen Kayley Parrett and Vicki Yang and sophomore Lindsay Holt, she has helped Esperanza improve from a 9-9 record last season to a No. 7 ranking in the county.

“I think I made the right decision,” Nadell said of giving up grappling for gripping and ripping.

“I loved wrestling. I loved every minute of it. But golf is a little more relaxing. Wrestling is stressful, and golf can be too, but this is more my personality.”

One of four girls on the Aztec wrestling team as a freshman, Nadell acknowledged that competing with the boys became too difficult.

“As a freshman it was fine, but it’s hard to compete with the juniors,” she said. “They have too much muscle.”

Nadell is also an avid recreational basketball and beach volleyball player. In the spring, she competes in the pole vault for the Esperanza track team.

“There is nothing like flying through the air,” Nadell said.

Except, perhaps, a golf ball flying through the air.

“I got into golf really hard starting in March,” she said. “I play all the time during the week and on the weekends. I guess you could call me an addict.”

Nadell, who hopes to improve enough to attract college interest, said wrestling and golf aren’t as different as they appear to be.

“They both take a commitment,” she said. “They take dedication, determination and hard work. A different kind of hard work, but hard work.”

FRONT-NINE BATTLE

A hot topic on the girls’ golf scene is the nine-hole match.

More specifically, whether nine-hole matches are official, if they should be reported and if they should count on a win-loss record.

Many teams play home-and-home nine-hole matches against opponents--sometimes a week or more apart--then combine the scores as one 18-hole match.

Others count each nine-hole match as a separate contest, regardless of opponent.

Southern Section rules allow a maximum of 18 matches in a season, not including postseason play. The rules don’t say, however, if those are nine-hole matches or 18-hole matches.

This opens a loophole in which a team could possibly play 36 nine-hole matches without violating the rules.

“It’s a discrepancy that needs to be taken care of,” said Thom Simmons, spokesman for the Southern Section.

Simmons said coaches must agree beforehand whether a match will be nine holes or 18. If the teams agree to split an 18-hole match into two days, the same lineups must be used by both teams on both days. If not, they would count as separate matches.

“There is nothing in our rules or the USGA rules that prohibits a nine-hole match from counting on a record,” Simmons said. “As long as the coaches are in agreement.”

Often times, however, one coach will count a nine-hole match while the other waits until the second nine is completed.

Section officials will discuss the issue during a meeting Monday.

ROUGH, BUT STILL RANKED

Villa Park had a rough week, playing four nine-hole matches and coming up on the losing end in all four. So why are the Spartans still ranked No. 4?

Two of those matches were against No. 1 University, one was against No. 2 Santa Margarita and the third was a three-way match with the Trojans and the Eagles.

“We put them up against the best there is,” Spartan Coach Gordon Sutorius said. “It might have been too much to start off the season.”

The Spartans were victims of inconsistent play from top players Shelly Raworth and Priscilla Park. Raworth had rounds of 47, 38, 40 and 48 in the four matches. Park went 45, 45, 41, 38.

“That’s what you expect early in the season,” Sutorius said. “But we’ll get it all together and we’re going to be a team to deal with in our league. We’ll see these teams again at the [Southern Section] regionals. I’m looking forward to it.”

WHAT THEY DON’T KNOW . . .

Santa Margarita Coach Tim O’Hara has more than a dozen boxes of Titleist DT-90 balls imprinted with the school name.

He hopes to unload them on the girls’ team, because he knows the boys prefer the higher-performance Professional or Tour Balata model of Titleist.

“If I tried giving these to the boys, they’d probably throw them back at me,” O’Hara said.

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