AROUND THE GREENS
Ex-UH players gathering to support men's team

By Bill Kwon

•	UH Men's Easter Tournament When: March 30, 12:30 p.m. shotgun start, Waikele Golf Course Deadline: March 26 Fee: $100 Format: Individual gross and net Information: Neal Takara 488-7767, Lorraine Leslie 956-3459, Ronn Miyashiro 956-4527

For $100, you get to support the team and get a round of golf. It's scheduled for March 30 at the Waikele Golf Course.

UH golf coach Ronn Miyashiro is excited about the event, which isn't a fund-raiser but a way of making people aware of a sport overshadowed by the big boys on the Manoa campus — football, basketball and baseball.

With a few exceptions — notably Brandan Kop and Mike Pavao, who both won Western Athletic Conference individual golf championships — not many golfers made headlines while playing for UH.

Yet they have gone on to become responsible members of the community while still contributing to the game of golf.

Even a partial list of former UH golfers is impressive:

• Kop, now a golf equipment distributor and still one of the leading amateur golfers with four Manoa Cup titles.
• Curtis Kono, 'Oahu Country Club golf superintendent and Manoa Cup champion.
• Guy Yamamoto, 1994 National Men's Public Links champion and Manoa Cup champion.
• Jonathan Ota, Kaua'i businessman.
• Larry Tanimoto, Big Island politician, recently inducted into the UH Sports Circle of Honor.
• Jay Hinazumi, golf distributor and tournament director for the state's major amateur events.

Also, there are professionals Kevin Hayashi, Ray Suzuki, Scott Head, Regan Lee and Greg Meyer, who plays on the Japan PGA tour.

You can add Miyashiro to the list as well. After transferring from the University of Oregon, the Hilo native captained the UH golf team in 1996, playing with Lee, brothers David and Anthony Kang, Kendall Fukumoto, Michael Ukauka and Van Wright.

"This all shows how much the golf program has contributed in developing these individuals," said Les Tamashiro, another former golfer who is helping to coordinate the event along with Miyashiro and Lorraine Leslie of the UH Foundation.

"They're all coming together to try and give back to the golf program," said Tamashiro, the Titleist representative in Hawai'i.

The golfing grads still haven't forgotten their UH days. The experiences, good and bad, still remain with them.

"It was a good experience," said Kop, who won the 1981 WAC title in his junior year. "You got to play different courses on the Mainland and you got to play against the best and see how good they were."

Some of the collegians he played against included Fred Couples (Houston), Bobby Clampett (BYU), Steve Jones (Colorado), Hal Sutton (Centenary) and Corey Pavin and Duffy Waldorf of UCLA.

Kop also learned that golf wasn't only fun and games. He still remembers a three-week road trip during his freshman year, living out of a suitcase, laden with textbooks, and eating team meals at McDonald's and Denny's.

Golf budgets were tight in those days. It hasn't changed.

Kop still remembers the team piling into a van and telling the coach to let one of the players drive.

"You know, we were scared of the coach, an older guy, driving," he said.

Still, everyone wanted to make the road trips, according to Ota, Kop's teammate at the time along with Meyer.

"The key was to make the traveling team," said Ota, who still remembers trips to the Air Force Academy and New Mexico, which had their own golf courses, as well as San Diego State.

He felt bad that Yamamoto, his 1979 state champion Kaua'i High School teammate, couldn't travel with him.

"I tried to walk on as a freshman, but I wasn't good enough," said Yamamoto, who made the team in his junior year. "I really enjoyed my time, and the experience, I think, was a stepping stone for me to get better."

Golf started as a club and intramural sport at UH-Manoa in the early 1960s under athletic director Ed Chui and then-coach George Seichi, whose players included Kono, Grady Timmons and Gary Kong, now together again at 'Oahu Country Club.

Bob Takano succeeded Seichi in 1976 and the players in his first year included Suzuki, Clark Miyazaki and brothers Clyde and Darrell Rego, who teamed up to win the Francis Brown Four-Ball championships in 1977-78 as collegians.

"I had just retired from the Air Force and was involved with the local junior golf program when Bob Tom asked me to help the university," Takano said.

With the goal of playing intercollegiate golf, UH hosted its first John A. Burns Intercollegiate Tournament in 1977 with seven teams competing in a 54-hole event at the Waialae Country Club. It has grown to more than 20 teams annually.

"We had big, big help from Jimmy Burns, the governor's son, to get started," Takano said. "We're getting the cream of the collegiate crop to come here for UH-Hilo and our tournaments ever since."

Mike Rich and Duane Pavao also coached the UH golf team, while faculty member Leon Schumacher served as interim coach four times. He recommended that his graduate assistant, Miyashiro, get the job.

After serving as interim coach while getting his degree, Miyashiro became the youngest head coach in UH history in 1988 at the age of 24 and the school's first full-time golf coach.

Golf has a proud, if little publicized, history at UH-Manoa.

Tamashiro hopes that the booster club will help make the public more aware of the men's golf program. "We hope to get together at least three, four times a year, play golf and catch up with each other."

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