By JOHN ERARDI
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Even before Fodor's Travel Guide '99 declared the Mississippi Gulf Coast one of the ''hot destinations'' for this year, the Leonard Pinth Garnell Golf Association (LPGGA) decided to take its annual spring golf trip there.

The LPGGA's namesake is the former Saturday Night Live character, Leonard Pinth Garnell (played by Dan Aykroyd) who hosted a regular segment called ''Bad Theatre,'' featuring horrible acting in great plays.

The LPGGA's motto is ''We play good golf courses badly,'' and we've been acting out that theme for almost 20 years, almost always chronicling the trips for the Enquirer's travel section.

We're a loosely knit band of a dozen turf butchers and, through the years, four to eight of us have taken a GOG (Gluttons of Golf) spring trip of three or four days, 36 holes (minimum) per day.

Our mission this year was clear: complete the tour of Southeastern states, and do it as warmly as possible. That meant Mississippi, and it meant the Gulf Coast, as far south as one can go in that state.

Six courses in three days

We didn't know what to expect . . . but we were delighted. From Pascagoula west to Bay St. Louis, the Mississippi Gulf Coast offers about 30 fine golf courses, several of the championship variety.

Two of the courses, the Oaks, which hosted a Nike Tour event in early March, and Bridges, designed by the king himself (Arnold Palmer), are contenders to crack into our Top 10 favorite courses of the Southeast.

In past years -- except when we've visited course-saturated meccas like Myrtle Beach or stay-and-play resorts such as Wild Dunes in Charleston, S.C. -- we've replayed in the afternoon the course we played in the morning.

This year, to cover as much ground as possible, we played six courses in three days. We bit off too much. If we had it do over again, we'd stick with the Oaks, Bridges and Mississippi National. If we could add a fourth day, we'd play Windance in the morning and Great Southern in the afternoon and then get out of Dodge.

And, speaking of Dodge . . .

We would be remiss if we didn't devote a few paragraphs to Great Southern Golf Club, the most delightfully eccentric course we have played. (Would you believe, among other things, a 35-mile-an-hour, 150-boxcar freight train that parallels the eighth hole, and separates the 17th green from the 18th tee box?) Never has a golf course so fittingly matched the nature of our play; we wish we had played Great Southern in the afternoon, not in the morning of our getaway day.

Why? Because, as always, by the last of our six 18-hole rounds, our swings have totally broken down: we have completed the cycle of first-round freshness; second-round I own this game; third-round thinking too much; fourth-round starting to get it back; fifth round where did my swing go, and sixth-round I never wanna play this stinkin' game again.

An eccentric wonder

There's no doubt that if we had played Great Southern last, more than one of us would have set our golf bags (minus the 1-wood) on the track following the 17th hole. Then, after hitting our tee shots on 18 -- can't resist one last crank-it-out there! -- we'd wait for the merciful collision. It was thoroughly do-able: The track is only 20 feet from the 18th tee and, on this day, the freight train roared by just after we had crossed.

What a course is Great Southern. Designed in 1908 by Donald Ross, who has laid out many of America's most cherished golf tests, Great Southern has lost its luster since hosting PGA events in the 1940s and early 1950s. But the passage of years has brought its latent eccentricity into full bloom.

You name it, it's here:

Barking collies and yapping poodles in neighboring yards; giant oak trees in the middle of fairways; towering narrow-trunked pine trees bent over so much by great winds that they defy gravity; antebellum mansions with back yards full of pink azaleas; barbed wire atop fences behind homes to keep out the golfers (I counted eight stray balls in one guy's yard; presumably, these have all accumulated since the sun came up); super-spicy Bloody Marys served from passing golf carts and awesome Gulf of Mexico backdrops beyond several of the greens.

It is sensory overload. It arrives early and never leaves.

I later notice when comparing my score card with my brother's that we had both stopped keeping our hole-by-hole score after No. 2.

We were caught in the cosmic grip.

The brilliance of Mr. Ross shines through in an excellent stretch of golf between holes No. 8 to No. 15 (both par 5s) that abound with rankings of ''8s'' and ''8.5s'' in our 1- to 10-point scale (10 is tops).

But, overall, Great Southern is not for the faint-of-humor.

Save it for last, and only if you have that fourth day. And don't forget the freight train: If you tee off at 8 a.m. as we did, your bag can rendezvous with the westbound engine at noon.

Aesthetics first

Now, for the pure golf of this trip.

My favorite course was Bridges -- the Palmer design -- but probably only because I had my best four hours of ball-striking there. The other golfers rated it slightly behind the Oaks, which was more of a classic design, totally devoid of any of the target-golf features of Bridges.

Of the four qualities we've always used to rank holes -- shot-making, risk-reward, overall course conditions and aesthetics -- we lean heaviest on the latter.

The golf alone is never enough.

Just as we like to have a golf bag full of turkey-and-provolone on rye (and jars of artichokes, Greek and kalamata olives and ice-cold 8-ounce Little Kings to wash it down), so, too, do we want a feast for the eyes. (By the way, here's something that could be discovered only on the golf course, and only after the home-made sandwiches have run out: roasted red peppers atop clubhouse-bought hot dogs: five stars!)

Bridges had, by far, the best aesthetics: sprawling wetlands, big ponds with sunning turtles and croaking frogs; Scottish- style wastelands of heather and gorse and splendid elevations looking down upon the greens far in the distance.

And, hey, you've got to like the technological touch: the GPS (Global Positioning Satellite). I'm not one who likes to ''read'' my way around the golf course -- having to check a pamphlet constantly to find out where the trouble spots are, and having to search for sprinkler heads marked with distances to the center of the green ­ so it was nice having the GPS visual on the cart's overhead dash: the distance to the hole automatically flashes no matter where you are, and you can also see the hole layout.

Way to be, Arnie!

But, overall (and overlooking the fact I hit the ball poorly; see phase three of the cycle, ''thinking too much,''), one has to admit the Oaks provides the best overall golf experience on the Gulf Coast.

Fast greens

First of all, there was not the slightest evidence of pretentiousness. That's saying something, given that the Chuck Connors look-alike of a starter at the Oaks mentioned that speed of the greens (''when the sun bakes 'em a little bit'') would be similar to Augusta National.

Normally, I'd have guffawed at anybody with the chutzpah to mention any course in the same breath as the home of the Masters, but this guy low-keyed it . . . and he was almost right.

The greens were fast, but not as fast as Augusta's glass-tabletop-quick surfaces.

Still, there were reminders: The sixth hole was reminiscent of Augusta's No. 13, the best hole in the golfing world. At the Oaks, No. 13's a 475-yard par 5 that requires you to carry a creek in front of the green with a 3-wood or an extraordinarily crisply hit long-iron to get home in two shots. It averaged a ''9.5'' ranking on our cards; though there were other holes on this trip that matched it in ranking, none matched it in risk-reward.

Mississippi National

Mississippi National is a must-play on the Gulf Coast, too.

It is, by far, the watery-est of the venues (ponds, creeks, streams, lakes on 12 of the 18 holes) and has a condorama quality to it (the LPGGA's strong belief is the fewer signs of civilization the better).

Some of the fairways were too tight for our liking, and the conditions a bit scruffy in spots, but the layout was consistently solid. Not a hole on the course ranked as less than a ''7.'' That is astounding. Simply put: not a mediocre hole on the course. We wouldn't revisit the Gulf Coast without stopping here.

JOURNEY