Toshiba Senior Classic Golf: A signature away

Richard Dunn

It is the signature hole at Newport Beach Country Club, but No. 17

is also the most significant spot on the golf course for the Toshiba

Senior Classic.

While other holes might play tougher in overall scoring, none is more

dramatic than the beautiful par-3 over water from an elevated tee.

Hole No. 17 is usually where a tournament is won or lost. It can cause

havoc on your scorecard, or provide heralded magic, as members of the

Senior PGA Tour will discover next week in the eighth annual Toshiba

Classic.

The two-tiered 17th green with wicked slopes is guarded by hilly rough

and a long, dangerous bunker in front. Anything short winds up wet;

anything long and your downhill chip or putt has to be tapped with the

perfect touch to prevent your ball from rolling off the top shelf and

possibly off the green.

Consistently ranked in the top three among the course’s toughest holes

in the Toshiba Classic, No. 17 forced Hubert Green to come up short on an

uphill putt once with the tournament on the line, and Green never comes

up short. It is the hole every golfer in contention views as critical in

the final stretch.

You figure the par-5 No. 18 finishing hole is a possibly birdie. When

players reach the par-5 No. 15, they can almost count a birdie before

teeing off.

But at 17, their knees start to buckle. Their stomach gets a little

queasy. Their mind begins to play games with their confidence.

Whenever a car is the hole-in-one prize during a pro-am or charity

round, it’s always displayed at the top of the 17th tee box. No other

par-3 hole would make sense.

While club members have been challenged by the signature hole for

decades, it made its debut on national television in 1996, the first year

Newport Beach Country Club hosted the Toshiba Classic, after the

inaugural was played at Mesa Verde Country Club in 1995.

Jim Colbert lapped the field on the par-4 No. 5, historically the

toughest hole on the golf course, with birdies in all three rounds to win

the 1996 Toshiba.

But, the following year, hole No. 17 would come into focus at the

conclusion of the longest playoff in Senior Tour history, as Irishman Bob

Murphy drained an unforgettable 80-foot birdie putt the day before St.

Patrick’s Day to capture the 1997 Toshiba Classic in a record nine-hole

playoff.

Murphy defeated Jay Sigel in the tour-record playoff with a python

putt at 17 that chugged its way up a difficult, double-tiered green. The

nine-hole playoff record would later be broken.

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 to launch another Player of the Year season as he

claimed his first of seven tournament titles.

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

stopped his ball from rolling into the water, allowing him to get up and

down for par on his way to a memorable course-record finish.

After Gary McCord won a memorable four-hole playoff in 1999 and Allen

Doyle captured a rain-shortened, 36-hole event in 2000, hole No. 17 was

back in the spotlight last year as Spaniard Jose Maria Canizares sank a

long putt to win a nine-hole playoff against Gil Morgan.

After having three putts lip out in an eventual nine-hole playoff

against Morgan, Canizares won on the 63rd hole, draining a 24-foot birdie

putt on a difficult left-to-right break to end the marathon playoff at

17.

Canizares, who won his first event on the Senior Tour and first title

anywhere since 1992 on the European Tour, had potential

tournament-winning putts lip out on the first, second and fourth playoff

holes (played on hole Nos. 18, 16 and 18).

“(In the playoff), it was just a matter of waiting to see who was

going to make a birdie, (or) who was going to fail,” Canizares said. “And

there was a lot of pressure, but it was very interesting. It was the

longest playoff, but it was great for me.”

Rest assured, No. 17 probably won’t turn out so great for most

players.