Even a Ram fan can enjoy the Senior Classic

TONY DODERO

I’m taking a break from the normal news topic discussions, so I’ve

decided to give my column a new name this week:

From the 15th Green.

Actually, the Toshiba Senior Classic golf tournament is one of the

biggest events we cover all year, so it is a pretty big deal in the

newsroom, especially in our sports and photo departments.

That’s where I was on Friday afternoon, sitting at the Pavilion

club on the 15th Green of the Newport Beach Country Club at the

invite of Werner Escher, the marketing guru from South Coast Plaza.

If you’ve never been to the Toshiba event, which raises about $1

million annually for Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian, you’re

really missing something.

It’s more than just a golf match, as a passel of commercial

ventures set up camp to pitch everything from luxury cars to luxury

clothes to luxury homes. You get the picture. Golf is not for the

thin-in-the-pocketbook crowd.

A live golf tourney, though, is enjoyable to watch, even for

someone like me who knows very little about the game, and sitting in

the clubhouse, we got a nice view of the action on the 15th hole and

a few long putts being made.

By we, I mean Escher; Susan Franklin, manager of the Bvglari

jewelry store at South Coast Plaza; James Hall, the managing partner

of The Clubhouse restaurant; and Martin Brower, a former

communications honcho for The Irvine Co. and former Daily Pilot

columnist, now writing for Coast Magazine.

We were talking it up a bit much from time to time, as course

officials kept admonishing us to keep it quiet.

It was like being back in college studying, or pretending to be

studying, at the library.

With the NCAA tournament in our minds, especially for Escher, a

former UCLA Bruin football player, and Brower, a onetime editor of

the Daily Bruin, Hall asked a question about the constant call for

silence.

“Why is it you can heckle a free-throw shooter but not a golfer

putting the ball?” he asked.

Yeah, why is that, I wondered.

“It’s because golf is a gentlemen’s game,” Escher said.

So which is golf -- a sport or a just a game?

If it is a sporting event, I must admit I really can’t watch it on

television.

Give me the excitement of football, basketball and even baseball

any time. Sure, it’s fun to watch a player sink a putt from far away

or chip a shot out of a sand bunker, but pound for pound, the action

just isn’t there.

But watching it in person is lot better as many in the crowd at

the Toshiba event can attest.

Even still, I spent a good bit of time talking to Brower, who like

me also doesn’t know much about this gentlemen’s game.

He told me how the Daily Pilot had just published his essay about

his recent vacation in our Travel Tales section and how many people

actually stopped him to say they read it.

That surprised him that a story so deep in the paper would have so

much readership.

Sometimes I wonder if the Daily Pilot defies the conventional

wisdom we hear about newspapers.

The prevailing theory is most people don’t read the paper from

cover to cover; that newspapers don’t attract women or younger

readers.

But our readership seems to buck those trends, in my experience. I

wonder if that’s just because of the highly local nature of our

content.

That’s a topic for another column.

Back to the Toshiba.

We really are fortunate to have such a prestigious event in this

community. Congratulations need to go out to all the organizers,

volunteers, Hoag Hospital officials, and Newport Beach Country Club

leaders and members who make this an exciting week, even for golfing

illiterates like me.

Here’s looking forward to next year.

As always, I’d love to hear your comments.

TELL IT TO THE EDITOR

* TONY DODERO is the editor. He welcomes your comments on news

coverage, photography or other newspaper-related issues. If you have

a message or a letter to the editor, call his direct line at (714)

966-4608 or the Readers Hotline (714) 966-4664, send it by e-mail to

[email protected] or [email protected], or send it by mail

to 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626.