New ground for Tipton

Bryce Alderton

Friday’s Jones Cup IV will be new on two fronts for Will Tipton.

The 35-year-old Big Canyon Country Club men’s champion has never

played the golf course at Mesa Verde Country Club and will be teeing

it up for the first time in the Jones Cup, part of the Fletcher Jones

Motorcars/Daily Pilot Club Championship Series, which began with the

Tea Cup Classic in 1997.

Tipton will team with Bob Lovejoy, Big Canyon’s Director of Golf,

who has been on two consecutive winning Jones Cup teams heading into

the 1:30 p.m. start Friday.

“I’m looking forward to it very much,” said Tipton, who is a 2

handicap. “I don’t get the chance to play with Bob that often so it’s

a good opportunity for him to carry me the entire 18 holes.”

The Jones Cup features a pro-am team from each of the four private

country clubs in Newport-Mesa (Newport Beach, Santa Ana, Mesa Verde

and Big Canyon) competing in a better-ball of partners format with

two foursomes following each other back-to-back with galleries in

tow.

Lovejoy and amateur partners Danny Lane (2002) and Ron Maggard

(2001), have won the last two Jones Cups after the Mesa Verde team of

Tom Sargent and Pete Daley captured the inaugural tournament in 2000.

Tipton is quite cognizant of the stakes Friday.

“If we aren’t in the hunt, I don’t know if Ron Maggard and Danny

Lane will talk to me anymore,” Tipton said. “I know Boyd Martin

(Santa Ana Country Club’s champion) and Steve Rhorer (Mesa Verde’s

title holder), so I look forward to playing with them and producing

some good golf out there.”

Tipton plays an average of five or six times a month, usually on

weekends. The partner in a real estate investment firm was on the

course quite a bit more when he was growing up in Hollister before

attending USC.

The Trojans claimed the Pacific 10 championship in 1985 --Tipton’s

freshman year -- when Duffy Waldorf was leading the charge.

USC reached the NCAA championships in 1988, the same year Tipton

qualified for his only U.S. Amateur. The tournament was held at The

Homestead in Hot Springs, Va.

“I missed the cut by one shot ... and that still haunts me,”

Tipton said with a laugh.

Harold Ecklund, Tipton’s grandfather, introduced him to golf at

age 5 and at 7, Tipton was entering tournaments.

“[Ecklund] took me around to these tournaments and we traveled

around Northern California in the summers,” Tipton said. “He was a

colonel in the Air Force and taught me everything about the game,

most importantly etiquette and sportsmanship.”

Eventually the constant competition against future PGA golfers

such as Billy Mayfair and Phil Mickelson, who was a freshman at

Arizona State when Tipton was a senior at USC, was too much for

Tipton to handle and he decided to give golf more of a “recreational”

status.

“After my senior year [at USC], I took two years off, I didn’t

pick up a club,” Tipton said. “Quite a bit was going through my mind

such as, ‘What am I going to do for the rest of my life?’ The day-in

and day-out competition with these guys like Billy Mayfair was a bit

disappointing. I lost pace with them so I decided it may be a benefit

to get out in the world and work.

“It is somewhat of a regret seeing these guys do well, but I’m

happy with the path I have chosen. I wouldn’t give up my recreational

play for anything.”

Tipton has been a member at Big Canyon since 1997, but by

November, it may be a bit more difficult for the future father to

find time for the links.

Tipton and Monique, his wife of 18 months, are expecting their

first child in November and they’ve even picked out a name -- John

Harold Tipton.

“He’s named after his grandfathers, so that made my mom and dad

very happy,” Tipton said. “I’m undertaking the babies’ room so I

could still have paint on my hands on Friday.”

Tipton is somewhat of a newborn to the Jones Cup, hoping to add

another coat of Big Canyon success.