Golf: Toshiba Senior Classic

Richard Dunn

NEWPORT BEACH - If you judged the merits of the Toshiba Senior

Classic on golf alone, it would rank high on the Senior PGA Tour list of

exciting finishes and classic Sundays.

As a whole, taking tournament operations and history into

consideration, the Toshiba Classic would also stand as one of the most

interesting and eclectic stops on tour with a Hollywood script and

bizarre, yet incredible, economic turnaround.

Off the golf course, the tournament has risen from near ruins to the

tour’s crown jewel. Once on the brink of destruction, the Toshiba Classic

has become the single-greatest philanthropic event on the Senior PGA

Tour.

Not a bad statement for a tournament once filled with lawsuits, a

bankruptcy, a public controversy over a $25,000 food and beverage invoice

and no money for charity.

“It’s a pretty phenomenal story,” former Senior PGA Tour official Tim

Crosby said in April. “It’s the old Walter Mitty type thing.”

Crosby, now an official for the PGA Tour, was the Senior Tour’s point

man in May 1997, when the ownership group of Newport Beach Country Club

refused to continue hosting the Toshiba Classic as long as the managing

charity remained intact.

That was a major problem for the Senior Tour, which viewed the golf

course and surrounding area as an ideal location for its tournament.

An acrimonious split between the country club and the tournament

operator, International Sports Marketing, left the future of the Toshiba

Classic in doubt.

But Crosby intervened and phoned his old buddies from the Taco Bell

Newport Classic Pro-Am, Hank Adler and Jake Rohrer, and within weeks a

new managing charity was in place to save the tournament: Hoag Hospital.

In three years as tournament operator, volunteers of the 552 Club, the

hospital’s fund-raising group, have reached record proportions in

charitable giving, topping the $1-million mark last year to become the

Senior Tour’s first stop to achieve the milestone.

Like a roller coaster with a series of hard-to-believe,

behind-the-scenes events, the tournament is a classic rags-to-riches

story and is now considered a possible Senior Tour stop for decades to

come.

“I know a few years ago they had some problems, but whoever’s come in

and grabbed the bull by the horns has done a helluva job I’d have to

say,” Allen Doyle said at the Las Vegas Senior Classic in April, six

weeks after winning the 2000 Toshiba Classic. “Wasn’t it in trouble at

one time? Or they were losing the event? And a few years later they’re

giving a million bucks to charity. That’s a pretty good turnaround.”

To fully appreciate and understand the deep-rooted history of the

Toshiba Classic, one must turn back to the wild and crazy 1970s and the

former Crosby Southern Pro-Am Clambake in Newport Beach, or “Little

Crosby,” which was named after Hollywood legend Bing Crosby.

It started innocently as a mini-tour event, a place for golfers to

come who didn’t make the cut at the famous Crosby National Pro-Am at

Pebble Beach.

Two Newport Beach titans and Hoag supporters, Marshall Duffield and

Charley Hester, started the Crosby Southern Pro-Am in January 1975 as a

benefit for Hoag. They had only one month to put the inaugural pro-am

together, held at Irvine Coast Country Club (now Newport Beach). The

first tournament was a success with 72 amateurs and Fred MacMurray as a

celebrity player.

Duffield, a former USC football star and college fraternity brother of

John Wayne (then Marion Morrison), teed it up with Bing Crosby and other

Hollywood types for several years. And, for a long time, Duffield urged

Crosby during 19th-hole discussions to bring a satellite event to Newport

Beach for the pros who were without a place to play when they got cut at

Pebble Beach.

One toasty day, Crosby said yes and Newport Beach changed forever with

the Crosby Southern Pro-Am, presented by Hoag Hospital’s 552 Club, which

Duffield helped start.

The golf tournament would last for 23 years and the managing charity,

Hoag, would later merge with the Toshiba Senior Classic, which is now No.

1 on the Senior PGA Tour’s charitable-giving chart.

For a bit of irony, veteran golfer John Jacobs, whose hilarious

theatrics in the 1999 Toshiba Classic playoff with eventual champion Gary

McCord will forever be remembered in Newport Beach golf lore, appeared in

more Crosby Southern Pro-Am events (later called the Newport Classic)

than any other professional (13).

In the unforgettable ’99 Toshiba playoff, Jacobs appeared to have

clinched it on the first playoff hole. But a magical performance by the

showman McCord stole the lead role.

Jacobs chipped in for eagle from 90 feet and turned the 18th green

into a circus act, going from twinkle-toes steps to a Chi Chi Rodriguez

sword dance, then falling backward onto the turf.

But McCord kept the playoff alive with a stunning 18-foot eagle putt

and the best show on the Senior PGA Tour for 1999, which started as a

four-man playoff, was underway.

In 1998, Hale Irwin shot a course-record 62 on Sunday to come from

five strokes back and leapfrog past 11 players on the leaderboard,

winning miraculously while triggering another Player of the Year season,

claiming his first of seven tournament titles.

Irwin was helped at 17 by the Famous Bunker Rake, which stopped his

ball from rolling into a lake, allowing him to get up and down for par on

his way to a memorable course-record finish.

In 1997, Bob Murphy defeated Jay Sigel in a tour-record nine-hole

playoff with an 80-foot birdie putt at 17, which chugged its way up a

difficult, two-tiered green. The nine-hole record would later be broken.

Jim Colbert won the 1996 Toshiba Classic by two strokes, the largest

margin of victory in tournament history, and George Archer captured the

inaugural Toshiba Classic at Mesa Verde Country Club in 1995.

Last year, the final round was rained out and Doyle was declared the

winner, taking home $195,000.

The 2000 Classic also featured Arnold Palmer for the first time. The

70-year-old legend played his first competitive rounds of golf in Orange

County.

Doyle, a former driving-range pro with an unusual backswing, became

the sixth different champion in the event’s six-year history.