Toshiba Senior Classic Golf: Record numbers to charity

Richard Dunn

NEWPORT BEACH - The gasp from the stunned greenside gallery was for

utter joy and surprise as the first check to Hoag Hospital was presented

by Toshiba Senior Classic officials after the final round of the 1998

event at Newport Beach Country Club.

It was the first year of the Senior PGA Tour event’s new managing

charity -- the Hoag Hospital Foundation -- and laid the foundation for

future gifts as the Toshiba Classic would become the most philanthropic

stop on tour.

While the Toshiba Classic has produced back-to-back years of raising

over $1 million to charity, it was the first year of $600,000 that sent

shock waves through the charitable-giving bones of tournament loyalists

and Hoag supporters.

That’s because the event was on the verge of collapsing because of

management problems two months after the 1997 event.

Under the leadership of tournament co-chairs Hank Adler and Jake

Rohrer, the event enjoyed an incredible economic turnaround.

Once tainted by lawsuits, a bankruptcy, a public controversy over a

$25,000 food and beverage invoice and no money for charity, the Toshiba

Classic was rescued in part by former Senior Tour official Tim Crosby,

who knew Rohrer for several years and phoned him one day to take over the

ailing Toshiba Classic.

“It’s a pretty phenomenal story,” said Crosby, the tour’s point man in

May 1997, when the ownership group of Newport Beach Country Club refused

to continue hosting the Toshiba Classic as long as the managing charity

remained intact.

That was a major problem for the Senior Tour, which viewed the golf

course and surrounding area as an ideal location for its tournament.

An acrimonious split between the country club and the tournament

operator, International Sports Marketing, left the future of the Toshiba

Classic in doubt.

But Crosby phoned his old buddy from the Newport Classic Pro-Am,

Rohrer, and within weeks a new managing charity was in place to save the

tournament.

In four years as tournament operator, volunteers of the 552 Club, the

hospital’s fund-raising group, have reached record proportions in

charitable giving, topping the $1-million mark in 2000 to become the

Senior Tour’s first stop to achieve the milestone. The four-year total is

over $3.4 million.

“I know a few years ago they had some problems, but whoever’s come in

and grabbed the bull by the horns has done a helluva job I’d have to

say,” Allen Doyle said, six weeks after winning the 2000 Toshiba Classic.

“Wasn’t it in trouble at one time? Or they were losing the event? And a

few years later they’re giving a million bucks to charity. That’s a

pretty good turnaround.”

Despite the economic climate this year, Adler, the event’s financial

backbone since the old days of the Newport Classic Pro-Am, believes 2002

will be another huge success for the only in-season professional golf

tournament in Orange County.

“We all work at this so we can make a large contribution to Hoag

Hospital,” Adler said.

“We’ve made $3.7 million in the last (four) years, and we’re going to

have a very good year this year. I’m not going to tell you what that

number is because some pieces still have to fall in place, but we’re

still going to have a good year in a very difficult economic

environment.”

Sponsors and members of the community who volunteer at the event or

play in the pro-ams are the heart and soul of the Toshiba Classic’s rise

to the top of the Senior Tour in charitable giving.

In 2000, when the event became the first to top $1 million in

charitable contributions, it topped the previous tour record of $938,000,

which was set in 1999 by the Coldwell Banker Burnet Classic at Bunker

Hills Golf Club in Coon Rapids, Minn., outside Minneapolis.

Rohrer and Adler were largely responsible for operating the hospital’s

mini-tour event, the Newport Classic Pro-Am, before the Senior Tour asked

Hoag to take over as managing charity.

In their first year in 1998, they helped raise over $600,000, a tour

record for a first-year managing charity.