The Fans Are Missing Out at Women’s Golf Tournament

What do you call a men’s professional golf tournament with 17 of the top 20 money-winners in the field?

Actually, you have your choice. You can call it the U.S. Open or the PGA or the Masters or maybe the British Open. You also can call it a “major.”

The men, you see, are quite picky about where they pick up their $100,000 checks. The top ones are, anyway. Not many tournaments other than the majors will attract more than perhaps a half-dozen of the top 20 money-winners, unless maybe Bob Hope is telling jokes on the first tee.

Jack Nicklaus, for example, begged off playing in this year’s Tournament of Champions. The rather ambiguous explanation was that he had other commitments. Yawn, so what if this was a showcase--and a rather lucrative showcase--for the winners of the 1986 tour events?

Would the Yankees beg out of a World Series because they had planned to take a cruise of the South Seas?

This brings me to a golf tournament that has 17 of the top 20 money-winners in the field. It is a women’s golf tournament this weekend at the Bernardo Heights Country Club.

It’s called the Kyocera Inamori tournament.

Naturally, the fairways are lined with avid fans, with those little box periscopes clustering the hillsides and making the galleries look like visitors from wherever E. T. called home. Naturally, it’s elbow to elbow, avid fans jockeying for green-side positions to watch the elite rolling in 25-foot birdie putts.

Naturally.

Not exactly.

From the looks of the galleries Friday, they could have held this event behind the Iron Curtain. The course looked like a marvelously manicured place to have a picnic without being disturbed. If you chose the right threesome, you could have had it to yourself. Maybe even played a game of bridge.

I could not get a crowd count for Thursday’s first round or Friday’s second round, and it could not have been because anyone was still counting. A couple of kindergartners could have handled the chore.

These women are the best in the world at what they do, yet they were playing in such relative solitude that the event must have been marked “classified” or “top secret.” I checked the gates on the way out to be sure there weren’t sentries.

How big was the crowd? About as big as Jack Nicklaus’ gallery would have been at the Tournament of Champions . . . had he shown, of course.

Remarkably, this tournament seems quite secure in San Diego. The sponsor, Kyocera Inamori--which manufactures electronic components--is concerned about attendance only to the extent that it impacts charities.

“We had about 25,000 fans in 1986,” said Brad Lillmars, Kyocera’s manager of special events and the tournament chairman. “We must have that to be able to achieve our objectives for our charities. We’re actually very pleased this year because our advance ticket sale is 400% ahead of last year and our telephones are ringing off the hooks. And the weather is fantastic.”

This, it seems, is one of those delightful occasions in professional sports in which the sponsoring entrepreneur is not concerned about its bottom line. Because Kyocera covers the $200,000 purse and community businesses cover operating expenses, 100% of the gate receipts are split 50-50 between the Child Abuse Prevention Foundation and San Diego State University. If the weekend crowds bring attendance up to the 30,000 to 50,000 Lillmars is anticipating, with crossed fingers, the charities will ultimately do much better financially than the golfers.

This tournament has had a number of problems, most of them beyond its control.

One of these problems has been its nomadic existence. It was at the Almaden Country Club in San Jose for three years before it came to Torrey Pines in 1983. It skipped its normal fall date and surfaced again in the spring of 1985 at Fairbanks Ranch. It moved to Bernardo Heights last year. Crooks don’t have to relocate that often to stay ahead of the law.

People are creatures of habit. They hear the Kyocera is in town and they wonder, “Fine, where is it this year?”

“We hope we have a home here at Bernardo Heights,” Lillmars said. “It’s up to the membership, but I have a positive reading. We’re very pleased with the relationship we have, and a lot of the members are among our volunteers.”

So maybe, just maybe, this event will be able to unpack its bags.

The next problem is the weekend. Anyone so interested in golf that he or she will trek onto the greens to watch has another temptation this weekend, just as last year; the Masters is on television, and that is a very tempting distraction.

As might be expected, Lillmars is very interested in getting this event scheduled away from the Masters. Scheduling a tournament on Masters weekend is like using home movies to compete with “The Cosby Show.”.

“I’d like to see the LPGA let the Masters stand by itself,” Lillmars said. “I know the LPGA is doing what it can, but it has a schedule to fill.”

And so the Kyocera Inamori, with 17 of the top 20 women’s golfers in the world, struggles for attention on one coast while one of the few men’s events capable of getting Jack Nicklaus out from behind his desk plays to worldwide attention on the other coast.

With this kind of field, the Kyocera should have a moment of its own. The marshals should be hushing crowds, rather than asking the one guy standing within 250 yards if he would please not chew his ice while the players are putting.