Women’s golf: Tea Cup Classic IV tees off today

Richard Dunn

NEWPORT BEACH - When you take four otherwise ordinary women’s club

golf champions and put them in one group for a community showcase, you

have to tip your hat to these ladies for stepping out on stage.

In a summertime celebration of women’s golf, the foursome will get out

today in the fourth annual, locally famous Tea Cup Classic at Big Canyon

Country Club (2 p.m. tee time).

They are four club champions, but four distinctly different

backgrounds and paths to their respective titles. They have opened up,

with their lives and golf careers chronicled in these pages, for the sake

of summertime community sports journalism in a special pocket of Orange

County.

And, today, regardless of their place on the leaderboard, members from

Big Canyon, Mesa Verde, Newport Beach and Santa Ana country clubs will

throng to see them in an easygoing stroke-play format that emphasizes a

good time and crowns a Daily Pilot golf queen for a day.

The element of rotating golf courses each year, in theory, was

supposed to be the great equalizer in the Tea Cup Classic, launched

through the Fletcher Jones Motorcars/Daily Pilot Club Championship Series

in 1997. (The series this summer started the Jones Cup, a men’s best-ball

pro-am.)

Two-time defending Tea Cup champion Marianne Towersey of Santa Ana

Country Club, where she has captured 15 of the last 18 club titles, owns

the women’s course record of 69 at Big Canyon and appears ready for a

three-peat performance.

Towersey has proved in previous Tea Cup Classics that if her long

putter is hot, it could be a moot back nine and an afternoon for the rest

in the field to play for runner-up honors.

Following her outing Thursday, Towersey is no doubt primed for a

victory.

She lost in match play to Karen Mabli of Palos Verdes, 1 up in 19

holes, in the semifinals of the Women’s Southern California Golf

Association Championships at Oakmont Country Club in Glendale.

Last year, Towersey advanced to the Southern match-play finals of 36

holes at Mission Viejo Country Club and lost to Candy Meyers of Glendora

on the 35th hole. Then, Towersey drove to Mesa Verde for Tea Cup Classic

III and played 18 more holes, before capturing her second straight

Newport-Mesa community title.

Denise Woodard of Mesa Verde, Debbie Albright of Newport Beach and

Colette Taormina of Big Canyon will try to dethrone Towersey in the event

that has come full circle in four years with each club getting an

opportunity to host the popular Tea Cup Classic.

This year’s 18-hole shootout will also award for the first time a

perpetual trophy, as the four ladies club champions in this newspaper’s

circulation battle for bragging rights, headlines and fun.

The Tea Cup Classic was created to promote a day for women’s golf and

bring the golf community closer together.

It started in 1997 at Newport Beach Country Club for the inaugural

(won by Big Canyon’s Selby Schriber), then was played at Santa Ana

Country Club in ’98 and Mesa Verde in ‘99, both won by Towersey. Now,

it’s Big Canyon’s turn for the turn-of-the-millennium edition.