Attendance Is Anybody’s Guess at Most Tournaments

While golf is a game of precision, estimating attendance at professional tournaments is usually someone’s best guess or an inflated figure intended to exaggerate the significance of an event.

The first four years of the Toshiba Senior Classic have seen estimates all over the board.

The first year at Mesa Verde Country Club, the crowd count was put at a realistic 15,000 for the final day and 30,000 for the week.

The tournament then moved to the Newport Harbor Country Club and total attendance was placed near 60,000 for each of the next two years, but the totals were generous.

Then Hoag Hospital Foundation took over the event from International Sports and Event Marketing last year and Jeff Purser was hired as tournament director.

The tournament had its biggest crowds yet, raised more than $700,000 and Purser estimated about about 55,000 to 60,000 spectators for the week.

“Golf attendance is something that as a tournament director I always get a chuckle out of,” Purser said, “because I know what’s realistic. If you wanted to spend a lot of money on mechanics you could count the people who come through the gate.

“But what’s that really proving? That doesn’t get you anything.

“You can calculate pretty closely the number of spectators based on the tickets you sold in advance, plus the tickets sold at the gate, shuttle bus runs and concessions sold. We had between 18-20,000 on Saturday and 20,000 to 22,000, or maybe even a little higher Sunday, but I don’t want to get crazy.”

No matter the actual figures, the event is on solid ground.

“We have no need to blow it out of proportion,” Purser said. “We’re successful, we’re definitely in the top two or three financially on tour and certainly we are in the top 10 in galleries on tour.”

The Senior PGA Tour is pleased with Orange County’s support, said Tim Crosby, a senior tour vice president. Crosby said attendance at Toshiba is substantially greater than at the Southland’s fall senior event, the Pacific Bell Senior Classic at Wilshire Country Club in Los Angeles.

“I think the Toshiba galleries are outstanding,” Crosby said. “I think this year probably they will be even better.”

*

The celebrity pro-am, which starts at 12:30 p.m. today, is the first event of the tournament.

The event is a joint venture between the hospital and the Deacon Jones Foundation, which works with “inner-city youths to help them regenerate their neighborhoods.”

Three amateurs are joined by a touring professional and members of the foundation, which include several current and former professional football players.

Among those expected to play are Junior Seau, Bruce Smith, Jack Snow and Jack Youngblood.

*

Bill Cunerty, longtime Saddleback College golf coach and sometime local prep sports color commentator, is going national next week.

Cunerty is hosting a new television golf show--”From Tee to Green”--on ESPN2 at 10 a.m. Tuesday. The half-hour show will be devoted to amateur golf and focus mostly on junior golf, a level of the sport that is largely overlooked by major media, Cunerty said.

ESPN2 has agreed to broadcast three shows--the next two are April 5 and May 3--but Cunerty hopes the network will want more.

“If this works,” Cunerty said, “I think it will be a neat way to get stuff out about junior players and the colleges because there is not a lot of information out there.”

Tuesday’s show will feature Candie Kung, the Fountain Valley High senior who is the top-ranked girls’ golfer in the nation, and James Oh, a junior at Lakewood High who won the U.S. Junior Amateur last summer.