Golf: Big Canyon gets brunt of bad joke

Richard Dunn

The beauty of Big Canyon Country Club has been tarnished at a time

when members and club officials are most sensitive about appearances.

When the midnight vandals snuck onto the golf course prior to this

week’s U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur Championship, they left a stench rarely

seen in these parts.

The private Newport Beach club, the most exclusive in Orange County,

fell victim to society’s dark side Sunday night as evil culprits damaged

three putting greens.

The punks poured a solvent on the 11th, 12th and 17th greens, which

has since turned into iron-stained blotches. They also used a sharp

object to carve various pictures and symbols on the putting surfaces,

including several swastikas.

“It is such a shame,” said locally famous heroine Marianne Towersey of

Santa Ana Country Club, the course-record holder at Big Canyon with a 69

last April.

“(The damaged greens) actually aren’t affecting play. They’re just

ugly reminders of idiotic people.”

Towersey doesn’t think it was related to this week’s event, but the

timing of the destruction might suggest otherwise.

Big Canyon and USGA officials scrambled to patch up the damage before

the 132 women teed off Tuesday morning for stroke play, but David

Voorhees, Big Canyon general manager, said after the U.S. Mid-Am “some

major repairs” will be necessary.

“It was very upsetting. When you see the damage, it makes you sick,”

added Voorhees, whose club stepped away from tradition in hosting the

championship.

Big Canyon, which is ultra-protective of its members, has made

exclusivity and privacy a trademark since opening its doors in 1972.

There’s much pride at Big Canyon, where anonymity is not only preferred,

but redefined.

Thus, playing host to one of the USGA’s 13 championships in 2000 was a

huge deal. It was sort of raising the curtain for the public to see.

Though Big Canyon has hosted tournaments before, including the 1996

Pacific-10 Conference championships (won by Stanford’s Tiger Woods), the

club typically doesn’t invite outsiders.

The three damaged greens, however, are all along MacArthur Boulevard,

where the predators apparently hopped over the fence and made their way

onto the golf course, then scratched satanic designs and other forms of

graffiti-type symbols, before really displaying their intelligence with

at least one swastika on each of the three greens.

There aren’t a lot of barbed-wire fences in Newport Beach, but maybe

things are changing.

The golf course has been turned around for the championship, meaning

the back nine is actually the front this week.

So the damaged greens for the event are the second, third and eighth

greens.

The eighth green (normally No. 17) is probably in the worst shape.

There are two areas where Big Canyon crew members patched up carved-out

words, because “they were too bad,” USGA rules official Joan Comisar

said.

There are 10 separate blotches on the green, caused by the vandals,

and two swastikas.

On the third green, the next hole south while going along MacArthur

Boulevard, there are six iron-stained blotches, caused by an unidentified

liquid. The one swastika on No. 3 is poorly drawn.

The second green is much of the same.

“Maybe it is the money (at Big Canyon) and somebody’s jealous,”

Comisar said. “There are people like that. The fact that it’s very

private and there’s money, maybe that makes somebody want to do it.”

Added Jeanne Myers, chairman of the committee for the U.S. Women’s

Mid-Amateur Championship: “(The vandals) haven’t bothered us a bit. The

superintendent was out here fast and there was no problem. It’s just too

bad for Big Canyon Country Club, but it’s not going to interfere with the

tournament.”

Corona del Mar High senior Allison Schauppner made a hole-in-one

Saturday during the Junior Event for the U.S. Women’s Mid-Am. She used a

5-wood to ace the 175-yard hole No. 6 (No. 15 normally).

Kelly Hunt (Newport Harbor) and 10 other Orange County girls golf

standouts also played in the Junior Event.

In Wednesday’s stroke play, Jennifer Hjalmquist of Williamsville,

N.Y., made a hole-in-one on the par-3 No. 3 (138 yards) with a 7-iron.

According to Myers, 42% of the golfers in the 132-player field are in

their 30s; 38% are in their 40s; 11% are in their 50s; and only 10% are

in their 20s. There are a couple in the 60s.

Big Canyon men’s club champion and 2000 Jones Cup participant Steve

Collins is a caddie in the mid-am. He caddied Tuesday and Wednesday for

Patricia Cornett of Mill Valley, Calif., who shot 73 in the first round.