AROUND THE GREENS
Return of senior event to Turtle Bay big boost

By Bill Kwon

Hale Irwin has made Turtle Bay his personal playground, winning the tournament three times. AP library photo • Oct. 12, 2003

The Turtle Bay resort and the PGA Tour announced a new four-year extension last week to keep the event on O'ahu's North Shore through 2008.

More significantly, starting in 2005, the Turtle Bay Championship on Jan. 28-30 at the Palmer Course will be the first full-field Champions Tour event of the year, following the week after the winners-only MasterCard Championship at Hualalai on the Big Island.

One person who has to be happy is Hale Irwin. The golfer has won all of the tournaments at Turtle Bay. He has won the seniors event in Hawai'i the past four years and five times overall, including Ka'anapali.

It will make it a mirror image of the back-to-back Mercedes Championships and Sony Open in Hawai'i coupling to start the PGA Tour season. As the Kapalua Resort, which hosts the Mercedes, likes to exclaim, "The PGA Tour Starts Here."

With the seniors now also playing here right after the Mercedes and Sony, the state can claim that the golf season truly starts here.

That's why the return of a regular senior tour event is such good news.

And all the more why the Turtle Bay Resort should be commended for stepping up as host of the event again. It underwrote the event when it moved in 2001 from Ka'anapali after a 14-year run, hosting it without the benefit of a title sponsor for three years.

The PGA Tour is still trying to help Turtle Bay in finding a title sponsor, but the resort owners decided to extend the contract despite the added costs.

"You've got to give Turtle Bay a lot of credit. What they are doing is so admirable," said Mark Rolfing, Kapalua resident and NBC-TV golf analyst who was in from the start when the state began talks with the PGA Tour for tournaments in Hawai'i.

"I think Turtle Bay has gone so far; more than anyone could financially. They basically had to underwrite the event without a title sponsor, which is almost impossible these days," Rolfing said.

Mercedes and Sony are paying big bucks for their PGA Tour events, no question. But at least they have prime time television coverage on ESPN, reaching a far wider audience than Turtle Bay does with its three days on the Golf Channel.

Still, John Dowd, Turtle Bay spokesman, feels that the change in schedule will help the event find a title sponsor.

"It's another announcement I'd like to make," he said.

Certainly, the new date will enhance the field, much as the Mercedes has helped the Sony Open, with more tournament winners hanging around another week to play in the first full-field event of the season.

It will be a better time for TV audiences as well, since the telecasts won't compete with pro or college football as it had done during Turtle Bay's previous dates in the fall.

All in all, Turtle Bay's pleased to be the host again, according to Dowd.

"We're recognized as one of the top five golf courses in the state. I don't think it would have been that without the Turtle Bay Championship," he said.

LPGA event lacking in state

Now if only the LPGA can get its act together and start its season here with a similar winners-only and first full-field event package, Hawai'i would be a golfing paradise.

It's really a no-brainer for the LPGA, especially with Michelle Wie now the buzz in women's golf. As PGA Tour golfer Tom Lehman put it, "the LPGA has got to be chomping at the bit. She's got star power."

Playing here would also give the LPGA a good jump start to an already late-opening season. The women start this year the third weekend of March, more than 2 1/2 months after the first men's event.

Surely, LPGA Commissioner Ty Votaw must realize that out of sight is out of mind.

Last we heard, the LPGA has said it is pursuing options in bringing a tour event back here for the first time since the Takefuji Classic left the Big Island for Las Vegas two years ago.

If the LPGA doesn't ever return, the 2002 Takefuji Classic at Waikoloa would make for a couple of good trivia questions some day:

• Who won the last LPGA event in Hawai'i?
• Who qualified to play in her very first LPGA event?

The answers: Annika Sorenstam and Michelle Wie.

However, one of these years, we'd like to see the LPGA starting its season here by restoring a tournament of champions, an event it dropped in 1997 after a brief three-year run in Florida. Can't say anyone can blame them. Florida's too cold in February.

The ideal site would be Ko Olina, which did host an LPGA event, the Hawaiian Ladies Open, for six years (1990 to 1995). The women loved the golf course and all the amenities.

The biggest problem, of course, is finding a title sponsor. The LPGA went through a Tokyo stock exchange of businesses — Tsumura, Orix, Itoki, Sunrise, Cup Noodles and Takefuji — through the years before running out of sponsors and saying sayonara here.

Takefuji's departure ended a 21-year presence by the LPGA here, beginning with the 1982 Women's Kemper Open at Ka'anapali, Maui, won by Amy Alcott. (Another possible trivia tidbit, by the way).

Bill Kwon can be reached at bkwon@aloha.net.