Diners Club Matches goes Newport

NEWPORT COAST - When Jack Nicklaus Productions needed a director

for its No. 1 television golf event, they turned to an old friend who

operated a successful relaunch of Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf on a

tiny island in less than three months.

When the company decided to move the Diners Club Matches from the

desert at PGA West in La Quinta to the ocean at Pelican Hill Golf Club in

Newport Coast, it called on Gary Pollard -- also among the area’s newest

residents.

Pollard was so convinced that this was a perfect match for golf and

business, and television and sponsorships, he bought a home here. Now, he

“never wants to leave.”

Once the genius du jour of Aruba Island for Shell’s Wonderful World of

Golf, after raising $250,000 on remote Barbados for an event that

increased rounds at the golf club by 7,000 a year and helped sell about

$6 million in real estate, Pollard was the guy wanted by Terry Jastrow,

president of Jack Nicklaus Productions and winner of seven Emmy Awards.

“I’ve been everywhere around the world, and this (Newport Beach), my

wife and I feel, is our utopia,” Pollard said Monday during lunch, as

players from the PGA, Senior PGA and LPGA tours rolled into town to play

in the $1.2 million Diners Club Matches Saturday and Sunday, the first

major golf tournament at Pelican Hill.

Ford has been at Pelican Hill since it opened its first resort course

in November 1991, and many, like himself, have been waiting for this

weekend ever since.

“The Irvine Company wants to do more for the community,” Ford said.

In the early 1990s, The Irvine Company built two championship golf

courses with ocean views on every hole, believing that, one day,

television would come and show Pelican Hill to the rest of the TVLand.

As we count the days to the end of the millennium, Pelican Hill has

found its own utopia, blending two stunning courses into one and creating

a magical spectator showcase -- starring Jack Nicklaus and the usually

great Newport Beach weather in December.

When the three tours gather this weekend in the made-for-television

event (shown live on ABC Saturday and Sunday), holes one through 14 will

be played on the Ocean North Course, then 15 through 18 on the Ocean

South -- dubbed by Ford as “the greatest four finishing holes in Southern

California.”

The reasons for combining the two courses are threefold: First, it

will allow spectators better viewing, especially from the hospitality

village, the party and entertainment base of the tournament; secondly,

it’s more camera friendly from a marketing standpoint (there’s plenty of

real estate to sell); and thirdly, it allows Pelican Hill to feature both

courses on television.

“(The Irvine Company) felt that now is the time to (host a major golf

tournament), and if it was going to do it, it was going to be first class

and the facility would be first class,” Ford said.

“This is not just the golf course we’re promoting, but we’re promoting

all of Orange County.”

So as Pelican Hill and Jack Nicklaus Productions gear up for the big

pageant, tournament director Pollard believes the event will help make

the area “a golf mecca” as it complements the Toshiba Senior Classic, the

Senior PGA Tour stop at Newport Beach Country Club in March.

“I don’t want to compete with the Toshiba,” Pollard said. “There are

enough spectators (in Orange County) to not only support the Toshiba

Classic and the Diners Club Matches, but more.

“I want this event to come back to Pelican Hill year after year. We

never want to leave.”

Pollard said the desert produced galleries of 350 people at times.

“We wanted the event in a growing and dynamic population where the

community would embrace it and corporations would embrace it, and I know

next year it will be five times better and my job will be three times

easier,” Pollard said.

A Celebrity Diners Club Matches Pro-Am will be played Friday. For

tickets Friday, Saturday and/or Sunday, call (949) 759-5175.