Toshiba Senior Classic Golf: Making a late Dent

Richard Dunn

NEWPORT BEACH - Jim Dent was scrambling before teeing off Friday in

the first round of the Toshiba Senior Classic at Newport Beach Country

Club.

Dent, one stroke off the pace behind leader Allen Doyle, said he

“needed some more bounce,” so he called his Callaway golf club

representative and, by Thursday night, he was playing with a new sets of

sticks.

“I was hitting my other ones too fat,” said Dent, whose sparkling

4-under 67 included six birdies and two bogeys. “I just felt I needed to

hit the ball a little more solid.”

Dent, who said his chances of winning the tournament were “great,” is

tied with Hale Irwin in second place. Doyle set the pace at 5-under.

Dent, 62, has won 12 times on the Senior PGA Tour with his last two

wins coming at The Home Depot Invitational (1997-1998).

Among the tour’s top-31 money winners every year he’s been on the

Senior Tour, Dent is off to another solid start this year, finishing tied

for third at the ACE Group Classic in Florida with a 14-under

69-67-66-202 -- the type of score that could win in Newport Beach.

Dent, a long-drive specialist who led the tour in driving distance

from 1989-94, made a 40-foot birdie putt on the first hole, a par-4, to

open his round and begin a string of three straight birdies.

But Dent bogeyed the par-3 No. 4, then birdied No. 9 and fell to

3-under at the turn.

On the back nine, Dent birdied 12, bogeyed 14, then birdied the

easiest hole on the golf course, the par-5 No. 15, to move into a

second-place tie with Irwin.

“Everybody shot low numbers,” Dent said. “I just want to be leading on

Sunday after 18.”

Dent, who grew up in Augusta, Ga., and served as a caddie at Augusta

National Golf Club, has played in every Toshiba Classic except one

(1999).