AVI STEINHARDT/Courier-Post Spectators, caddies and golfers cross the bridge to the 18th green during the Philadelphia Open Monday at Pine Valley Golf Club. AVI STEINHARDT/Courier-Post PGA competitor Terry Hertzog and his caddie hike through a monster bunker on their way to the 7th hole at Pine Valley Golf Course in Clementon during the 2002 Philadelphia Open Championship Monday. (July 15, 2002) PHOTO BY AVI STEINHARDT/Courier-Post Staff. AVI STEINHARDT/Courier-Post PGA competitor Bill McGuinness eyes up his putt on the 10th hole at Pine Valley Golf Course in Clementon during the 2002 Philadelphia Open Championship Monday. (July 15, 2002) PHOTO BY AVI STEINHARDT/Courier-Post Staff. AVI STEINHARDT/Courier-Post Golfers and spectators enjoy lunch in the dining area of the Pine Valley Golf Course Clubhouse during Monday’s 2002 Philadelphia Open Championship in Clementon. (July 15, 2002) PHOTO BY AVI STEINHARDT/Courier-Post Staff. AVI STEINHARDT/Courier-Post PGA competitor Jeff Haas checks out some of the vintage golf clubs on display in the clubhouse of the Pine Valley Golf Course in Clementon. The course hosted the 2002 Philadelphia Open Championship Monday. (July 15, 2002) PHOTO BY AVI STEINHARDT/Courier-Post Staff.

PINE VALLEY - It's easy to get lost at Pine Valley Golf Club - and not just in the woods that surround the best course in the world.

There's lost, and there's lost - one related to a futile search for a little white ball, and the other to a startling sense of disorientation and confusion.

This is South Jersey?

"There's an aura around here that you won't find any place else in the world," John DiMarco said after finishing in a tie for first place Monday in the 98th Philadelphia Open for the Golf Association of Philadelphia.

Monday was the day when the wooden gates on the other side of the railroad tracks at the end of Atlantic Avenue sprung open like the lid of a jewelry box, and everybody got a chance to see this rare gem, this priceless, timeless place.

It's South Jersey, but it's not South Jersey. It's a golf course that's a one- iron from The Jackrabbit at Clementon Lake Park. It's a golf course that's in its own little world.

"Nobody knows what this place is like untilthey come here and play it," said Chris Lange, a member at Overbrook Country Club in Bryn Mawr, Pa., who finished one stroke behind the leaders. "There's a mystique, a mystery about it. It's like, `What is it that makes a golf course the greatest golf course in the world?' "

Good question, and one best left to serious students of the game. Robert Trent Jones, perhaps the most famous course designer in history, once described Pine Valley this way: "It pos sesses more classic holes than any course in the world - 10 of the 18. Of the remaining holes, five are outstanding, two are good and one, the 12th, is ordinary, which at Pine Valley, is tantamount to being a misfit."

This is the course carved out of woods and water by George Arthur Crump, who supposedly spotted the land out of a train window on his way to Atlantic City in 1912 and exclaimed, "What a place for a golf course!"

That's the legend, anyway, and there's a lot of those tall tales around these tall pines - and lots of pictures and trophies and golf clubs that date to the early days of the last century in the old clubhouse with its polished wood and genteel air.

"You turn in that little driveway, and you go up that little cedar path to the clubhouse," said John Appleget, a professional at Blue Heron Pines in Cologne, who tied DiMarco for first place and will face his friend in an 18-hole playoff this morning. "You go inside, and there's a lot of history and a lot of tradition. More than I know."

Club members refer to Pine Valley's mystique and its imposing look as the ultimate home-court advantage - visitors are overwhelmed by the reputation of the course, and also by the sight of its magnificent holes.

"It's like every hole is the 17th at TPC," said Lange, referring to the famous island green at the Tournament Players Club at Sawgrass in Florida. "The holes just look visually intimidating."

They look good, too, all rolling hills - yes, smack dab in the middle of South Jersey - and smooth fairways and manicured greens, all bracketed by those tall, green pines.

This is a place where the fairways look like greens, and the greens look like pool tables - pool tables with undulations and unpredictable curves and without cushions, that is.

This also is a place where there's a cathedral-quiet along the paths through the woods.

Rough? There's some. But this is Pine Valley, so that means you're either in the fairway or you're out of bounds.

Crump, who died suddenly at the age of 46 just months before the course was completed in 1918, envisioned his game as a series of hops between islands. The tee is an island. The fairway is an island, or two. The green is an island.

The trick at Pine Valley is to stay on the islands, to avoid the no-man's land of woods and waste areas, sand and scrubs, and traps after traps - including an impossibly deep one on No. 10 with a nickname that's unfit for polite conversation, and a family newspaper.

Pick your favorite. Maybe it's No. 2, an uphill par four with traps along both sides of the fairway.

"The prettiest hole you'll ever play," Appleget said.

Maybe it's No. 7, a 544-yard behemoth unofficially known as "Hell's Half Acre."

Maybe it's No. 14, a par three from an elevated tee and over water to a marvelous little green. Or No. 15, an uphill par 5 with an impossibly narrow approach - great on the eyes, horrible on the nerves.

No. 11? A slight dogleg right, 379 yards, uphill, another marvel to behold, another monster to play.

"You have to hit such delicate little irons to get to places on the greens where you normally don't have to get," said Appleget, who like DiMarco shot four-over-par 144 on the 36 holes of competition Monday.

Said DiMarco, the professional at Laurel Creek in Moorestown: "What's unique is the way George Crump designed it. You can see how he looked at everything, how he planned the holes, the way the greens slope one way and then the other."

These guys are club professionals and top amateurs, and the best score was four over par, and more than few guys were walking near signs that announced their scores to be 20 over, or worse.

But that's Pine Valley, a little slice of South Jersey where it's easy to get lost - in more ways than one.