Senior Classic Finds Stability in Its Fifth Year

By MARTIN BECK

March 11, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

The Toshiba Senior Classic turns 5 this week and finally has the stability to throw itself a decent birthday party.

The entertainment is set--Lee Trevino, Gary Player, Hale Irwin, Chi Chi Rodriguez and many of the world’s best professional golfers over 50 years old are already at Newport Beach Country Club.

The decorations are up--a flurry of banners welcome visitors to the grounds that now look like a corporate tent city. The guests are on their way--most of the 75,000 or so anticipated spectators are expected to show up Friday, Saturday and Sunday for three rounds of Senior PGA Tour competition.

But most importantly, the bills will all be paid.

Orange County’s only major professional golf event has made a dramatic recovery from a shaky past that included a bankruptcy, a public dispute over a $25,000 food and beverage bill and two lawsuits.

That baggage is only a bad memory around tournament headquarters, however. In the summer of 1997, Hoag Hospital Foundation, the fund-raising arm of Hoag Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach, stepped in as tournament organizer, and change was almost immediate.

The event, a money-loser in its first three years, in 1998 made more than $700,000, a profit that was donated to the Hoag Cancer Center.

After Irwin’s course-record 62 to win the event, tournament co-chairman Hank Adler said the 1999 tournament would raise a million dollars. Now, Adler backs off his prediction a bit.

“I think I was a little too ebullient,” Adler said last week. “I don’t think we’ll get quite to a million dollars. We’ll do fine this year, but the excitement of the moment probably overtook the 1998 co-chairman.

“That was a life highlight for us. How many people have the opportunity to work on something the magnitude of the Toshiba Senior Classic that produced a $700,000 profit for charity in the first year?

“I was speaking on behalf of 1,000 volunteers who were just elated and are still elated. It’s a labor of love for all those 1,000 people.”

The financial performance vaulted the tournament nearly to the top of the senior tour list. Only the Coldwell Banker Burnet Classic near Minneapolis raised more for its charity: $900,000.

For its efforts, raising nearly 7% of the tour’s $10.3 million total raised for charity, the Hoag foundation was named the senior tour charity of the year.

That a tournament in Orange County is successful is no surprise to senior tour officials, who expected the event to soar sooner.

“There was no question there was great potential in that marketplace,” said Tim Crosby, a senior tour vice president who oversees tournament business affairs.

“If you could draw up the ideal community for golf, if it’s not Palm Springs, it would be Orange County. You’ve got a vibrant corporate community. It’s a wealthy community and there are a lot of people there.”

Perfect demographics or not, the Senior Classic struggled to find its footing after starting in 1995 at Mesa Verde Country Club in Costa Mesa. On the course, it was a solid tournament. The fields were strong and so was the competition. For example, the 1997 tournament ended only after Bob Murphy made an 80-foot putt to beat Jay Sigel on the ninth playoff hole.

However, behind the scenes, the picture was rarely rosy. The Orange County Sports Assn., which had the original idea for the tournament and ran it in 1995, lost an undisclosed amount of money and later declared bankruptcy with debts of $1.5 million.

International Sports & Event Marketing took over for the sports association in the second year and moved the tournament to Newport Beach Country Club. Bob Neely, president of ISM, said the 1996 event lost money and that he dipped into his own pocket to give $55,000 to several charities.

The title sponsor, the Irvine-based Toshiba Computer Systems Division, seemed satisfied with how the tournament was being run because the company extended its agreement with Neely three years, through the 2000 tournament.

But after the 1997 event, Neely’s relationship with Newport Beach Country Club, senior tour officials and eventually Toshiba unraveled.

The first public rift came to light in May, 1997, when Neely said he was looking for a new site for the tournament because the owners of the country club didn’t want the tournament back.

The dispute was said to be over $25,000, a portion of a clubhouse bill that ISM contested but eventually paid. There were also questions about the charity organization that, according to senior tour rules, ISM was supposed to set up to run the event. Classic Charities of Orange County had applied for but had not received tax-exempt status, said Crosby, the senior tour official. It also hadn’t announced any gift to charity after the 1997 tournament.

“The bottom line was that the organization had not achieved its charitable status,” Crosby said. “Certainly they were not in a financial position to continue even if they had met that stipulation.”

The dispute is now being played out in Orange County Superior Court. Toshiba has filed suit against Neely for fraud, deceit and mismanagement. Neely filed a countersuit claiming Toshiba broke a deal.

The trial is scheduled to begin in August.

“They just walked on the contract,” Neely said Wednesday in a phone interview. “The tournament was run in exquisite style.

“Everybody wins but me. The community, the country club and the senior tour all have a great event. I created the event and spent my money and they pull the contract.”

With Neely’s company out of the picture, the senior tour turned in the summer of 1997 to Hoag Hospital Foundation, which through its 552 Club had run a charity pro-am golf tournament at Newport Beach Country Club for 23 years.

In its final five years, the Taco Bell Newport Classic, featuring professional golfers battling to get onto the PGA Tour, raised $1.2 million for the hospital.

After such success, the last thing Hoag wanted was to be associated with a problem event, Adler said, but after a couple of months studying the situation, the foundation agreed to sign on.

Soon after, Hoag hired Jeff Purser, who had turned around the senior tour event in Grand Rapids, Mich., as tournament director. Purser said it was an incredibly difficult task.

The support of Hoag Hospital Foundation, which raised more than $900,000 last year at fund-raising events other than the golf tournament, helped. The hospital’s media relations department also pitched in, Purser said, and there were 1,000 volunteers during tournament week, nearly twice as many as in previous years.

“We were 10 steps ahead of the game because of the communications department and the 552 Club,” Purser said. “Truthfully, otherwise the tournament wouldn’t have gotten done. And I would have just looked like . . . other people.”

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Friday’s Tee Times

Tee times for first round of the Toshiba Senior Classic at the Newport Beach Country Club:

8:20 a.m.--Norm Davis, Bill Hall, Barney Thompson

8:30--Ray Carrasco, David Lundstrom, Gary McCord

8:40--Frank Conner, Walter Hall, Tom McGinnis

8:50--Lee Elder, Babe Hiskey, Walter Zembriski

9--Larry Laoretti, Jerry McGee, Jim Thorpe

9:10--Harold Henning, Larry Mowry, Calvin Peete

9:20--Dave Hill, Tom Jenkins, Orville Moody

9:30--Billy Casper, Jim Ferree, Don January

9:40--Hubert Green, Tom Shaw, Rocky Thompson