LPGA Takes Another Swing at Oakmont

The golf course at Oakmont Country Club is renowned for its treacherous greens, small and subtle, wrought with breaks that can drive even the steadiest player to distraction.

But delicate putts are only part of the story at the inaugural Los Angeles Women’s Championship, which begins here today. The Ladies Professional Golf Assn. has come to Oakmont in search of a different kind of green: money.

Three times in the last 20 years, tour officials have tried to establish an annual event in Los Angeles. Three times, they have failed.

“When the LPGA misses a major market like Los Angeles, they miss out on a lot of television coverage and sponsors,” said Mel Helitzer, an Ohio University professor who studies the business of sports. “From every angle--exposure, income and prestige--an L.A. tournament is something that everyone wants.”

With so much at stake, and with women’s golf being a tough sell in the land of Shaq and Nomo-mania, the LPGA has pinned its hopes on an unlikely strategy. This time, the tour is trying to woo the big city by starting small.

“If we were going to vie for all of Los Angeles right off the bat, that would be tough,” LPGA Commissioner Jim Ritts said. “First you become part of a smaller community, grow the tour stop patiently, then use that as a launching pad.”

That’s where Glendale comes in.

Adorned with oak and cypress, the 68-year-old country club nestles against the Verdugo Hills in a residential neighborhood at the heart of this community of nearly 200,000 people.

The tournament is a no-frills affair with few of the trimmings, and much less advertising, than other tour events. There is no corporate sponsor, no McDonald’s or J.C. Penney with their attendant staffs. Instead, an army of volunteers has been assembled.

Some 500 club members and residents not only signed up for duty, but also paid $45 for the privilege. The fee was used to outfit them in official jackets and hats.

They will work as marshals and standard bearers, carrying score signs along with each threesome. Glendale Mayor Sheldon Baker tells of a friend, a real estate agent, who volunteered to lug golf clubs around the course.

“I said, ‘You? You’re going to be a caddy?’ ” Baker recalled. “He’s so excited. That’s the enthusiasm a city of this size and sort can offer.”

Said Al Merkel, a longtime Oakmont member: “Everyone wants to help. We want this tournament.”

This is not the first time the tour has stopped at Oakmont. The GNA-Glendale Federal Classic was here from 1985 through 1987. But after the tournament’s three-year contract expired, the club called a private meeting to discuss an extension. Many members, assuming the contract would be extended, stayed home.

“In those days, we didn’t vote by mail. You had to come to the meeting,” Merkel said. “We had a bunch of old codgers who didn’t want to give up their club for a week. All the naysayers got out to vote and the rest of us sat on our thumbs.”

With less than half the membership in attendance, the naysayers prevailed by a 117-113 margin.

This time around, when the LPGA expressed interest in returning, Oakmont held its vote by mail. Of the nearly 400 ballots returned, 75% favored bringing the tournament back.

“The club really welcomed us. So did the city,” Ritts said. “It’s very important that we are part of a community that has opened its arms to us.”

But it takes more than hospitality to run a tournament. Two other Los Angeles LPGA events--at Rancho Park Golf Course in the late 1970s and again in the late 1980s--folded when major sponsors withdrew after just two or three years.

“It takes at least three years to establish yourself,” Ritts said. “You’d better be patient and be prepared to build your audience.”

The LPGA is gambling, at least for the present, that it can sustain and nurture this tournament without a corporate heavyweight.

The tournament’s organizers have, instead, parceled sponsorship among numerous local businesses, literally selling their event hole by hole. Sean Brenner, editor of the Chicago-based Team Marketing Report newsletter, called it a reasonable strategy.

“It think it’s important to appeal to companies in Los Angeles,” he said.

Glendale Memorial Hospital, for instance, paid $50,000 to sponsor the seventh hole. The hospital’s health foundation paid $20,000 to sponsor a pre-tournament promotion, then raffled off the free tickets it got from the LPGA.

“For our $20,000, we’ve raised $30,000,” said Michael Pfaff, a foundation spokesman. “Plus we’ve created a lot of excitement among our board members and others in this area who are avid golfers.”

The Glendale Redevelopment Agency worked a somewhat similar deal. For $150,000, the agency got the city’s name on both the ninth hole and a pro-am tournament earlier this week. It also got 20 slots in the pro-am, which it then offered to executives from companies thinking of moving to Glendale.

Only one other LPGA event makes use of such piecemeal sponsorship, Ritts said. When Sarah Coventry, a jewelry concern, pulled out of a Rochester, N.Y., tournament in 1982, community leaders formed a coalition to raise the needed money.

The approach showed benefits. With multiple sponsors, the withdrawal of one or even several no longer spelled financial ruin. And the local businesses that got involved also helped drum up ticket sales.

“The Rochester event has become totally imbued in that community,” Ritts said. “We want the same thing for Oakmont.”

Returning to Los Angeles has already paid some dividends.

Tournament officials expected no more than 60 requests for press credentials, but have received more than 100 from print and electronic media. Fox Sports West will offer a tape-delayed broadcast of the final round Sunday as well as live broadcasts on its Fox Sports West 2.

“That is valuable coverage,” Helitzer said. “The LPGA has got to be more than just a statistic, a daily result. The women have got to get their photographs on the evening news and the sports pages.”

The chance for a little publicity is not lost on the players. Chris Johnson, a tour veteran, said: “You know, L.A., that’s where you want to get your name in the papers.”

Indeed, these are heady times for women golfers. The LPGA has added seven events in the last two years. Total prize money has increased from $14 million in 1989--the last time the tour stopped in Los Angeles--to more than $30 million this year.

“Women’s golf is on the cusp of a huge explosion,” said Val Skinner, a longtime professional. “We’ve missed playing in Los Angeles and we’re so excited about coming back. I think the tour belongs here.”

Meanwhile, Baker is calling this tournament a “model for what can be done” when big-time sports meet small-town cooperation. Ritts figures that local support will buy time for the tournament to establish a reputation and win fans. There is already talk of the future, of network television coverage and the addition of a corporate monolith to buttress the local lineup.

Of course, other tournaments have started out with high hopes that were subsequently dashed. Just as before, the LPGA has only a three-year contract with Oakmont. And some of the sponsors, including the redevelopment agency, have not committed to anything beyond this year.

Ritts acknowledges that keeping the Los Angeles Women’s Championship alive will take both patience and a little luck.

“You have to be in the right place at the right time,” the commissioner said. “We think Glendale is the right place. Maybe now is the time.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

* MEMORABLE MISS: Amy Alcott is still haunted by a missed putt at Oakmont Country Club in 1987, the last time the LPGA staged a tournament in Glendale. Page C9

* NOSTALGIC RETURN: Jan Stephenson, Jane Geddes and Chris Johnson, who each won at Oakmont when the LPGA Tour visited from 1985-1987, jumped at the chance to play there again. Page C10

* GOOD TIMING: Jill Briles-Hinton, in town for the LPGA tournament, made the most of her stay by angling for tickets to see the Rosie O’Donnell Show. Page C10

* FIRST-ROUND TEE TIMES: C17