Glendale Hopes LPGA Tournament Can Put Spotlight on City

Every New Year’s, Pasadena draws the nation’s focus by projecting a vision of utopian pageantry with the Rose Parade and Rose Bowl game.

No one is suggesting the Valley of the Stars Championship will do the same for Glendale, Pasadena’s neighbor to the west, but organizers of the LPGA event at Oakmont Country Club hope it can raise the city’s profile while promoting local business and civic interests.

“Glendale doesn’t have much of an image,” said Michael Pfaff, vice president for fund development at Glendale Memorial Hospital, one of the tournament’s 18 sponsors.

“I think hosting the tournament helps because it brings the focus of the nation and the respect of golfers in the nation to Glendale. It brings people together.”

Philip Lanzafame, economic development administrator for Glendale, appreciates what the tournament brings to the city.

The three-day event, which begins Friday, will be televised by the Golf Channel.

“The tournament provides a wonderful vehicle for exposure,” said Lanzafame, who has worked closely with organizers since the event’s inception in 1997. “Through TV coverage, we can reach people outside of Los Angeles and Southern California.”

In addition, Lanzafame points out visitors are a boon to the business community because they “stay in our hotels, shop in our stores and eat in our restaurants.”

The tournament, previously known as the Los Angeles Women’s Championship, underwent a name change this year to recognize the entire region and the event’s association with the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley, a partnership of private and public enterprises that was formed after the 1994 Northridge earthquake in an effort to jump-start the Valley’s economy.

“It gives them the vehicle, just as it does with our businesses, to promote the San Fernando Valley,” Lanzafame said.

Clearly, it takes a village to stage a professional golf tournament.

Marianne Plenn, chairwoman of the Oakmont tournament committee, will oversee approximately 450 volunteers who will work, among other capacities, as course marshals and walking scorers who follow groups of players and chart shots for LPGA statistical purposes.

Plenn, an Oakmont member who lives in La Canada, said her committee has been scrambling to acquire volunteers. About 600 volunteers worked at last year’s tournament, but Plenn says that number is down in part because the PGA’s Buick Open in La Jolla falls on the same weekend this year.

“In past years, we drew several volunteers from San Diego, but I think we’re losing them to the Buick Open,” Plenn said.

Marshals are responsible for securing roped-off areas and crossovers, where there are breaks in the ropes.

Security at golf events has assumed a higher profile since last week, when an unruly fan following Tiger Woods at a tournament in Phoenix was found to have a loaded semiautomatic handgun in his fanny pack after being wrestled to the ground by a security guard.

“We’ve made our security people, paid and volunteer, aware that this is a possibility at any venue where there are people gathered,” Plenn said. “We’re not making a big issue of it, but it is something we do mention to our security people.”

Festivities begin Thursday with the $10,000 Glendale Memorial Shootout, sponsored by the hospital, in which seven golfers compete in match play, with one golfer dropping out after each hole.

The shootout field includes local favorite Emilee Klein of Studio City and Se Ri Pak, whose entourage of Korean media rivals the horde of Japanese journalists who followed Hideo Nomo when he first began pitching for the Dodgers.

Kirsten Jacobsen, tournament coordinator, is looking forward to the competition as much as anyone. A former high-level amateur golfer, she marvels at the way the pros make it look so easy.

“I’ve played this course and I know where my drives land,” Jacobsen said. “I don’t even come close to these women.”

Jacobsen, who moved to Glendale 1 1/2 years ago from Northern California, works on the tournament nearly year-round in a behind-the-scenes capacity, logging 100-hour work weeks in the two weeks preceding the tournament.

“Glendale as a city really embraces this event,” Jacobsen said. “Everybody who is in a position of authority in the community are lending a hand to help make this a successful event.

“People say, ‘This can put Glendale on the map.’ ”