Senior Golf Tournament Back on Course

The Toshiba Senior Classic, after four months of stagnation, moved forward Thursday.

But the new operating team and tournament beneficiary--the Hoag Hospital Foundation--is well aware of the challenges for the event, which will be held next March at Newport Beach Country Club.

First, the foundation--its affiliation with the event announced at a news conference Thursday at the country club--must hire a tournament manager and hopes to be able to do so soon.

The organization must also come up with ways to gain community support especially since the tournament has been in limbo the last four months because of a disagreement between the country club and International Sports & Event Marketing, which ran the event the last two years.

“We need to elicit the support of the community,” said Hank Adler, tournament co-chairman with Jake Rohrer. “We need to get businesses and the community to support this thing.”

The tournament probably will be played the week of March 9-15, but the official date won’t be set until the Senior PGA Tour’s schedule is released next month.

“We felt like if this tournament was to not just survive but thrive,” said Tim Crosby, a Senior Tour official, “it had to have a community-based organization running it . . . We’ve got a lot of work to do. We have seven months to stage a $3 1/2-million event. It will get done. You will see a marvelous event.”

Toshiba officials also tied up some loose ends by donating $35,000 each to the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Orange County, the National Dyslexia Research Foundation and the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Assn.--the designated charities of the 1997 tournament.