Stroke of Good Luck

At the Red Lion Hotel, menus shaped like scorecards and a faux putting green in the main lobby herald the event expected to draw thousands of dollar-dropping golf fans.

The nearby Glendale Galleria is welcoming some of the world’s best female golfers with gifts and retail “passports” offering them shopping discounts.

Around the city of Glendale, they’ve thrown down the welcome mat for the Los Angeles Women’s Golf Championship this weekend. But they haven’t exactly rolled out the red carpet.

To be sure, city officials and local merchants, not to mention golfers, say they are delighted to have the Ladies Professional Golf Assn. back in town--and many hope it will put the “jewel city” on par with the Dinah Shore Golf Tournament, which draws tens of thousands of fans to Palm Desert each spring.

But then there’s the crowd that doesn’t know a birdie from a bogey.

“I didn’t even know there was a golf tournament,” said Michelle Mathias, 20, while serving up scones and Danish at the Berolina Bakery, not far from the Oakmont Country Club. “The only golf I know is from the movie ‘Happy Gilmore.’ ”

If the tournament has yet to become a household name, perhaps that’s understandable, given the event’s youth and the fickle relationship between the region and women’s professional golf.

There have been three failed attempts to establish a women’s tournament in the Los Angeles area the past 20 years--including a tournament in Glendale that folded in 1987 after just three years. So the tournament, in its second year at the Oakmont Country Club, may need time to grow up.

“In major markets, it takes a little longer for an event to become part of the sporting and social calendar,” said Ladies Professional Golf Assn. commissioner Jim Ritts. “Right now we have one year’s experience.”

Still, Ritts said he was encouraged by trends, including a 50% increase in advance ticket sales over last year and double the involvement by sponsors, which now include Buick, a major corporate backer of men’s and women’s golf events.

LPGA officials also boasted pre-event publicity for the Oakmont was “better, stronger and more visible” than last year.

But some folks in town, especially those in the golf biz, say that Glendale--from City Hall to local merchants--could be doing more to help establish the event. If the city is a host, they say, it’s a passive host.

“It seems like a very lackluster effort. It’s a shame,” said 36-year-old James Christie, manager of International Golf in downtown Glendale. “Talking to my customers, I would say half the golfing public in Glendale doesn’t even know there’s a tournament this weekend,” Christie said, adding, “The Montrose Christmas festival got more publicity than this.”

Andi McClure, 37, president of Sportours of Montrose, also questioned why there wasn’t more done to involve the community.

“There was no program to solicit restaurants and local business,” she said. “If someone is going to bring an event of this type here, they should be clear what the expected results will be.”

Local businesses should be flooded with promotions, McClure added. “They would love to participate.”

Last year, the city of Glendale spent $150,000 to help promote and underwrite the pro-am tournament and the championship itself.

“By supporting an event such as this, we are supporting our business community,” said Phil Lanzafame, the city’s economic development coordinator.

But this year, Glendale spent only $50,000 on the event.

Why the drop? The tournament is already building momentum, Lanzafame said, and did not need the extra city support, especially with the arrival of new corporate sponsors.

Ritts and Lanzafame say their goal is still to create a regional, if not national, sporting event.

“That’s absolutely one of the hopes,” Lanzafame said. “I would love it if the notoriety of the tournament grew such that people in New York knew about Glendale and what it had to offer.”

“We’ll trend in the right direction,” added Ritts. “Over the next several years we want to move this event onto television and I think it will benefit from corporate title sponsorship. It’s going to grow in influence.”

That certainly would make Audrey Yokota happy. She is the tourism manager for the Glendale Galleria. There are no statistics on how much extra money the tournament brought the mall, but shop owners definitely noticed a nice bump in sales during the event.

“We want the tournament to continue to stay in Glendale,” Yokota said. “We want it to be synonymous with the city.”

Even so, there still are folks like Mathias, the counter worker back at the Berolina Bakery who wasn’t aware big-time golf had landed in Glendale. Some businesses near the golf course, unlike the Galleria, didn’t notice any impact on their sales last year.

But one of Mathias’ customers, 66-year-old Howard Eichinger, said the tournament’s impact probably will be felt over time.

“I think it’s a great thing they’re coming here,” he said. “It’s a top-notch event.”

The event, which began Thursday, is scheduled to continue through Sunday.