Issue link: https://digital.insidegolfmedia.com/i/1068791
E ver wonder who the best golfers are in Southern California? The best tour pros, the best club pros, the best amateurs and the best juniors? How about the best celebrities who are members at local private clubs? Well, many of the an- swers are a click away – on the Southern California Golf Association's website: www.scga.org. This is how simple it is to unlock the truth, assuming all of those who post their scores are not sandbag- ging, of course: Go to scga.org, click on "Handi- cap" from the menu at the top of the page, then click on "Handicap Index Lookup" from the drop-down menu. Next, scroll down to another multi- choice menu and click on the box "Name & State." Then find California on the drop-down menu for states, fill in the last and first names of the golfer you have targeted and, finally, click the dark blue "Lookup" box. You may be surprised by what you learn, as I was when I went hunting for handicap treasure last month. For example, the best three GHINs (golf handicap indexes) that I found on the SCGA website in December were for tour pro Jason Gore (+6.5 index out of Lakeside GC in Burbank), club pro Michael Block (+6.4 out of Arroyo Tra- buco GC in Mission Viejo) and Valencia High of Placentia senior Ricky Castillo (+6.4 out of SCGA Junior Club). Interest- ingly, Ricky's older brother, Derek Castillo, a junior at Cal State Fullerton, was not far behind with a +5.9 index out of the SCGA Collegian Club as of December. Best celebrity golfer I found is soap opera star Jack Wagner (0.4 handicap out of Bel-Air Country Club in LA), the only non-athlete in 29 years of the event to win the annual American Century Celebrity Championship at Edgewood in Lake Tahoe. For the uninitiated, a golf handicap is calculated using the best 10 scores from a player's most recent 20 rounds and adjusting for the difficulty of a par- ticular course and factoring in which set of tees were used. That's why a 4 handi- cap playing from the white tees at Mile Square Golf Course in Fountain Valley would not be equivalent to a 4 handi- cap playing from the back tees at Torrey RANDY YOUNGMAN COLUMNIST continued on the next page > THE 19TH HOLE SoCal GOLF INSIDER SHOOTING STARS A look at the top athletes and celebrities who play at SoCal golf courses Kevin Costner and Cheech Marin were sidekicks in the movie Tin Cup, and both carry low handicaps at SoCal clubs.