Toshiba Senior Classic Golf: Getting better with age

Richard Dunn

NEWPORT BEACH - Unlike most years, the golf course at Newport Beach

Country Club, site of the Toshiba Senior Classic for the seventh straight

year, remains much the same.

“We really haven’t changed anything from last year,” Newport Beach

Country Club President Jerry Anderson said. “We’ve rebuilt a couple of

tees, but we really haven’t changed anything. We’ve focused more on just

getting the golf course ready for the Toshiba and making sure it’s in

premiere condition.”

Anderson said officials from the Senior PGA Tour were out inspecting

superintendent Ron Benedict’s masterpiece in January and had nothing but

positive comments.

“The changes we’ve made over the last few years are really maturing,”

Anderson said. “The landscaping (at the par-3 No. 4 over water) is really

coming out.”

Before last year’s tournament, the course changed the hole at 18,

building mounds behind a newly elevated green for a different look on

players’ approach shots.

While the golf course isn’t long (6,584 yards), it features subtle and

difficult greens, giving the layout some teeth.

“The winning scores here have been 10-to-12-under,” Anderson said. “A

lot of these tournaments are (posting winning scores of) 18-to-20-under,

even for three rounds. So this golf course has held up extremely well for

the Senior PGA Tour players. People are out there having fun. They’re not

burning it up.”

Last year’s remodeled 18th green had little change on how the seniors

approached the 510-yard par-5. They still aimed for the green in two.

From 100 yards in, No. 18 changed a lot. The green is now elevated and

undulated, mounds have been built behind the green and bunkers have been

added.

A flower planter behind the green, on the lower end of a large mound,

displays the letters NBCC.

The mature, tree-lined golf course with a traditional layout, which

opened in 1954 as Irvine Coast Country Club, is known for its gently

rolling terrain.

Hole No. 18 has historically played as one of the easiest in the

Toshiba Classic, and last year, after the remodeling, it was still easy.

The finishing hole ranked as the second-easiest hole on the golf

course last year, a position it has held in five of the six years Newport

Beach has hosted the event.

One of the club’s biggest projects in the late 1990s was adding a rock

retaining wall in front of the fourth green, along with a cascading

waterfall and an updated irrigation system. Local wildlife also favored

the improvements to the lake, which has been inhabited by geese, ducks,

coots and Egyptian swans.

In that far corner of the golf course, colorful flora was planted on a

mound seven feet high bordering the third fairway and fifth tee box. More

than 20,000 yards of dirt was moved in the project, which received rave

reviews and is now maturing.

William Bell designed the original course in 1952 when it opened as

the Irvine Coast Country Club, then Harry Rainville provided redesign in

1973 and Ted Robinson in 1985.

The golf course is almost 50 years old and features about 2,000 trees

along 100 acres, including about 630 palm trees.