Volunteer Brigade Stays the Course at Golf Classic

Every year at this time, Barbara Hagerty of Hacienda Heights takes a week’s vacation in Newport Beach . . . to pick up trash.

There’s no shortage of the stuff where she’s going. That’s because at least 60,000 people are expected to descend on Newport Beach Country Club this week for the sixth annual Toshiba Senior Classic, Orange County’s only major professional golf tournament. Hagerty and the volunteer crew she leads will be there to clean up and haul garbage off the course for the next seven days. It doesn’t sound like much of a vacation, but Hagerty is unfailingly upbeat about her task.

“The work is work; it has to be done,” she said. “But the camaraderie is the real reason I like to do it. I’m saying hi to people all over the course.”

Hagerty is one of an especially dedicated band of volunteers who help make the Toshiba event one of the most successful on the Senior PGA Tour. Last year, the tournament raised $828,500 for the Hoag Hospital Foundation, making it second on the senior tour in net proceeds to an event in Minneapolis. This year, organizers hope to raise a senior-tour record of $1 million.

While fans are following golf legends Arnold Palmer, Lee Trevino, Chi Chi Rodriguez and Gary Player, volunteers will be working on the fringes. They are the ticket-takers, marshals, walking scorers, standard bearers, delivery people, starters--an army of about 1,200 people donating their time.

“Having 1,200 volunteers,” said Jake Rohrer, co-tournament chairman and a volunteer himself, “we can have them do a lot of things that other tournaments might pay for, and that obviously affects the bottom line, the net proceeds.”

Those proceeds were nonexistent the first three years of the Toshiba tournament. The competition on the course was often riveting, but two sets of organizers failed to produce profits.

Title sponsor Irvine-based Toshiba Computer Systems Group, which kicks in more than $1 million toward the professional purse and for television time on ESPN, eventually fired and sued the second organizer. The lawsuit was settled out of court last summer.

Because of the dispute, the future of the tournament was in question for a few months in 1997, but then the Hoag Foundation stepped in. It brought experience with golf tournaments--for 23 years the organization sponsored the Newport Classic Pro-Am, a low-key two-day affair that raised $1.2 million in its final five years--and a dedicated base of volunteers.

With less than six months to prepare for the 1998 tournament, Hoag hired a tournament director, Jeff Purser, from a successful event in Grand Rapids, Mich., and quickly got the tournament pointed in the right direction.

The private citizens behind the effort are headed by co-chairmen Rohrer, president of a Santa Ana art supply distributor, and Hank Adler, a partner with an accounting firm in Irvine. Adler, who concentrates on the event’s finances, and Rohrer, the operations man, also led the foundation’s smaller golf event in its final years at Newport Beach Country Club.

But hosting a senior tour event is a more difficult proposition, given the demands of millionaire players, a national cable television network and crowds that swell to more than 20,000 each weekend day.

“We’ve got so many moving parts to this thing that it can be rattling,” Purser said. “If it’s not well-organized and the communication doesn’t flow effectively, I can assure you that there are disasters--and I’ve seen that at many events. But we don’t have any because our people are great.”

Before Hoag took over the senior event, organizers made do with not more than 700 volunteers. That made it a struggle, said Pete Cuneo, the volunteer coordinator who walked away from the 1997 event vowing never to return.

The energetic 81-year-old from La Mirada came back when he was convinced things would be different with Hoag involved. Now Cuneo, who has volunteered his time at more than 40 professional tournaments, has plenty of help.

“The biggest problem we have is . . . a lot of people who all want to do the same thing,” Cuneo said. Many want to be near the action--for instance, a walking scorer might be able to spend the day a few feet from Palmer, probably the most popular golfer ever.

Each volunteer pays $60 to help defray the cost of the uniform. In return, they receive a clubhouse pass for tournament week, two one-day tickets, and meals and preferred parking while they are on duty.

An added compensation, say the volunteers, is contributing to Hoag Hospital and sharing in the esprit de corps.

“To me, if you get . . . satisfaction out of volunteering,” said Dick Yuhnke, a volunteer marshal from Yorba Linda, “how could it get any better than to do it when it’s related to something that you have a passion for?”

Yuhnke is among a core group who volunteer at several Southland tournaments. Less than two weeks ago, Yuhnke was marshal chairman at Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades for the PGA Tour’s Nissan Open.

Marshals provide a crucial crowd-control service, making sure spectators remain quiet while golfers prepare for and make their shots. At 6 feet, 3 inches tall and 250 pounds, Yuhnke is blessed with a booming voice.

That comes in handy at Toshiba, where he is stationed in the raised hospitality tents that surround the 18th green. Tournament sponsors pay thousands for the prime seating, and their guests sometimes forget to keep their voices down.

“His job is to keep everybody under control,” said Rohrer, the tournament chairman. “He is great. When the players come up to the green, he holds up his arms and says, ‘OK, quiet! Quiet!’ When they walk off, he says, ‘OK, party!’ ”

The 350 marshals, who split up eight to 18 to a hole, are the biggest group of Toshiba volunteers. One of the smaller groups does most of its work just after dawn.

Terry Ireland leads the 28-person course repair detail, which at first light fans out on the fairways to repair divots golfers made the day before. Ireland, a gravelly voiced former Marine sergeant who works at the country club, had his crew out Sunday preparing the course for the tournament’s first event, today’s celebrity pro-am.

“I guarantee you,” Ireland said, “when everybody walks out on the golf course Monday morning, there will not be a divot.”

Ireland & Co. will be out every morning going over the same ground.

It’s repetitive work--particularly in cold, damp conditions--but no one complains.

“As soon as the tournament is over,” Ireland said, “they say, ‘Be sure to count us in next year.’ ”