New Senior Pro Carrasco Just Happy to Be in the Game

Garden Grove is not that far from Newport Beach, where the Toshiba Senior Classic will be played beginning Friday.

But for Ray Carrasco, the two cities have been separated by several continents in his golf career.

Carrasco grew up as the oldest of 15 siblings in Garden Grove, where he would plant a soup can in his backyard to serve as a golf hole. He used a baseball bat as a golf club.

Forty years have passed since those humble beginnings, and the years have taken him around North America, Europe, Asia and South America in pursuit of a golf career.

Carrasco, 50, had a glorious breakthrough Monday when he was low qualifier for the Senior Classic with a five-under-par 67 at the Marbella Country Club in San Juan Capistrano. Friday at Newport Beach will mark his debut on the Senior PGA Tour.

Winning the qualifying event was like a dream come true for Carrasco.

“It was kind of like an answer to a prayer,” he said.

Carrasco fell in love with the sport when he first saw it on television at age 9.

“I saw this putt. I was so enthralled, I thought, how do they do that?” he said.

Carrasco took his earnings from selling newspapers to a local thrift shop, where he bought a few battered clubs. Every weekend he set up a course on a field near his home using soup-can holes and real estate signs for flags. He checked out books from the library like Sam Snead’s “Education of a Golfer.”

About two years later, his father, also named Ray, took him to Willowick golf course in Santa Ana. To the Carrascos, Willowick may as well have been Augusta--they were so overwhelmed by the atmosphere that they left and went to a nearby par-3.

There Carrasco got his first glimpse of a real green. He got down on his knees and ran his hands over the grass.

“All these people were looking at me. I never had seen or felt anything so pure,” he said.

Carrasco shot a three-over-par 30 that day in his first round of golf. The woman working at the course said he could have the next round free if he could beat that score. He shot 28 and got a job at the course.

Carrasco soon began to play on the Southern California junior circuit and also played at Garden Grove High, where he was All-Southern Section as a junior and senior before graduating in 1964.

He led Santa Ana College (now Rancho Santiago) to the state and Western Region championships in 1965 before playing two years at San Diego State.

Carrasco played on the Canadian and European tours in the early 1970s before earning his PGA Tour card for the 1975 season. He lost his card after the season, however.

“It’s just crushing,” he said. “Your identity is wrapped up in how you play.”

But after his son, Ryan, was born in 1976, Carrasco suddenly had a new identity--father--and a few days later he won a mini-tour tournament at Mission Hills Golf Club in Rancho Mirage.

“You just have this incredible high and you realize, ‘So what [about] golf?’ ” he said. “You have a heightened sense of enjoyment but not the hanging sense of proving stuff.”

Carrasco embarked on the South American and Asian tours in the late 1970s. He made the cut in the 1981 U.S. Open and also played in the 1983 U.S. Open and 1985 British Open before settling down in Irvine to teach and help his wife, Suzanne, raise their children.

Carrasco has been head teaching pro at the Laguna Hills Golf Range for the last 15 years. His daughter, Ali, attends Woodbridge High. Ryan graduated from Woodbridge in 1995 and attends Princeton.

The Senior PGA Tour seems perfectly tailored to Carrasco’s finesse game. Carrasco dreams about making it big on the senior tour, but pressure doesn’t accompany those dreams the way it once did.

“I don’t have that feeling of, ‘Gee, I’ve finally made it,’ ” he said. “I’ve got a nice job. I love working with my students. I get a chance to play this week with these guys. Why should I be nervous?”

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The pairings and starting times were announced for Friday’s first round. Defending champion Jim Colbert will tee off at 10 a.m. with Dave Stockton and John Bland.

Among the other groups are: Gary Player, Jim Dent and Isao Aoki, who begin at 9:20 a.m., Chi Chi Rodriguez, J.C. Snead and Gibby Gilbert, who begin at 9:30 a.m., and Lee Trevino, Hale Irwin and David Graham, who begin at 9:40 a.m.

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Dave Hill, who has won six Senior PGA tournaments, withdrew from the Senior Classic and was replaced by Rick Talt of Laguna Beach. Talt shot a three-under 69 in qualifying at Marbella and was the first alternate.

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Mike Hill, Dave’s younger brother and the senior tour’s leading money winner in 1991, was the low pro in Wednesday’s pro-am. Hill shot six-under 65.