Tearful win for Wright

Bryce Alderton

The calendar said Father’s Day was Sunday, but for Newport Beach

resident and former Corona del Mar High golf star Jeff Wright, the

annual observance came a week earlier, on a golf course he knows

well.

Wright, 39, who lost his 86-year-old father Jack in October after

a bout with throat cancer, battled through an emotional roller

coaster to claim his first men’s club championship at Newport Beach

Country Club June 13 on a course where he won the junior title seven

times since taking up the sport at age 13.

With rounds of 71-78-71-70 for a 6-over-par 290 for the four-day

championship, Wright defeated Brad Casdorph by seven strokes.

“It’s the most special tournament I’ve ever won,” Wright said.

“Crying in the middle of a round, I’ve never done that before.

Sobbing and having to wipe my eyes to make the next shot meant so

much.”

The tears came from remembering a father who encouraged Wright to

practice and play as much as he could growing up.

“I don’t play that much so to shoot even par or better every round

and stay calm ... I really felt like it was more for him than it was

for anything else,” said Wright, the Los Angeles Times’ Orange County

Player of the Year as a CdM junior in 1982. “When I shot 78, I think

he was tired from helping me out the day before. “I felt his presence

the whole week.”

Wright dropped to his knees, weeping after making birdie putts on

Nos. 17 and 18 in the final round, one of several times tears welled

up in his eyes.

“On [June 13] I had a two-shot lead on 17 [a par-3] standing over

a 30-foot putt and said to myself, ‘Dad, help me make this putt’ and

I made it.”

It was just in October that Jeff Wright sat by his father’s side

in the days preceding his death and the conversations flowed around

golf.

“Just when he was on his deathbed, I said, ‘You can’t go now, the

club championship is coming up and I am going to win it this year.’

He died a day later,” Wright said.

To help keep the memory alive, Jeff Wright’s mother, Nudie, wrote

her husband’s name, along with other reminders, on her son’s golf

balls.

Wright said it calmed him down.

On the first day of the championship, Wright hooked his tee shot

on the 17th hole and looked back at his mother.

“I told her, ‘If I make three from here, we’re not alone,” Wright

said.

The chip rolled within a foot of the hole.

Winning the men’s club championship is something Wright wanted

ever since he took up the sport. Jack Wright handed his membership to

his son three years ago.

“Danny Bibb was my idle growing up,” he said. “I wanted to be in

that last group on the last day with the gallery watching me.”

“It was a special thing for him to win the tournament,” said Paul

Hahn, Newport Beach CC’s head golf professional.

Bibb, a member at Big Canyon Country Club, has won a Newport-Mesa

record 11 men’s club titles.

With the win, Wright qualified for this summer’s Jones Cup,

scheduled Aug. 11 on his home course. The Jones Cup is a better-ball

of partners format that pits the men’s champion -- or alternate if

the winner can’t attend -- from each of the four private clubs in

Newport-Mesa with a member of that club’s golf staff in an 18-hole

match. Wright and Hahn joined forces in the championship two years

ago.

Playing in front of galleries is nothing new to Wright, who won

numerous junior tournaments, including the Southern California Junior

Championship at Santa Ana Country Club in 1982 after six rounds of

match play. He claimed the Sea View League individual title in 1983

and was selected to the All-American team of the American Junior Golf

Association.

Wright earned a scholarship to Arizona State University, where he

redshirted and played one season before struggles prompted him to

leave golf and join the music business.

He now owns an appraisal business and has spent the last year

getting his “life back together.” Wright and wife Celia separated a

year ago, but have since reconciled.

“Last year I missed the cut [during the NBCC men’s club

championship] and couldn’t even think about golf with everything else

going on,” Wright said. “Since then, life has been great.”

Wright spent Sunday watching the final round of the U.S. Open with

his brother Chris, his caddie during the club championship.

They were missing someone.

Judging by the previous week, however, Wright was not alone.