Mr. Jones coming of age
Bryce Alderton
After all the hype, it’s finally here.
The refurbished Jones Cup, billed as the ultimate in team golf,
makes its entrance onto Newport-Mesa’s conscience when 16 players,
divided evenly among the four private clubs in this area, tee off
beginning at 1 p.m. today at Newport Beach Country Club.
Each of the four clubs (Mesa Verde Country Club, Santa Ana Country
Club, Big Canyon Country Club and Newport Beach Country Club) will
feature three amateur champions (ladies, men’s and senior) with a
golf staff professional in an 18-hole best-ball bonanza that drips
with anticipation among the participants.
“I am thrilled about this,” Santa Ana Country Club’s women’s
champion Marianne Towersey, who won five of seven Tea Cup Classic
titles, said of this year’s Jones Cup.
The Tea Cup Classic featured the women’s champions from each of
the four clubs in an 18-hole stroke-play event against one another.
Towersey, along with women’s champions Debbie Albright (Newport
Beach Country Club), Akemi Khaiat (Mesa Verde Country Club) and Sally
Holstein (Big Canyon Country Club) all said the new format would
remove much of the pressure from what they were used to in the Tea
Cup Classic.
The refurbished Jones Cup added another element to the fold with
the senior champion from each club for the first time.
The result: More golfers than ever involved in a championship
expected to bring enthusiastic galleries supporting each club.
“You’ll see some better golf and definitely some good golf,” said
Santa Ana Country Club head pro Geoff Cochrane, who paired with Boyd
Martin in last year’s Jones Cup. Martin won Santa Ana’s senior title
in June to qualify for today’s event and joins Santa Ana men’s
champion Bill Welch, Towersey and Cochrane.
With more help available on each team, Cochrane expects golfers to
get aggressive.
“Players will be shooting at it more instead of being passive with
only two players [like the prior Jones Cup],” Cochrane said. “It will
be less pressure, but at the same token, you figure you’ll have to
shoot lower knowing there’s four players in a group instead of two.”
Each foursome will count the two best balls per hole in a style
reminiscent of the prior four Jones Cup events, when a men’s amateur
paired with a golf staff pro in a better ball of partners structure.
Big Canyon Country Club owned the Jones Cup the last three years,
with Director of Golf Bob Lovejoy claiming titles with three
different amateurs.
Lovejoy, though, will team with men’s champion Will Tipton for a
second straight year -- the two earned last year’s Jones Cup crown --
along with senior champion Steve Collins and women’s champion Sally
Holstein.
Mesa Verde Country Club features head pro Tom Sargent with women’s
champion Akemi Khaiat, senior champion Steve Rhorer and men’s
champion Dave Irwin.
Sargent returns to the scene of arguably the greatest shot in the
four prior Jones Cup events.
In the inaugural event in 2000 at Newport Beach Country Club,
Sargent hit a flop shot from the deep greenside rough to within two
feet of the hole on 18, which led to a birdie putt and Mesa Verde’s
one-stroke victory over the hosts, Hahn and amateur Bob Kraft.
“I hope I don’t have to hit that one again,” said Sargent, who,
like Hahn, played in all four previous Jones Cup championships. “To
birdie the last hole and win ... I always like to do that stuff.”
Hahn said the greens won’t “be as quite as fast” as they are for
the Toshiba Senior Classic held each March at Newport Beach Country
Club.
A majority of players said the key to winning will largely lie on
those greens, with putting.
Several of Newport Beach Country Club’s greens tilt west toward
the Pacific Ocean, but the break isn’t always noticeable to the naked
eye.
“The greens can speed up when they want to,” said Welch, who
played the course several times before joining Santa Ana. “They can
be tricky. Sometimes they break the other way. Usually the ocean
happens to be the other way.”
Mesa Verde’s winning score in the first Jones Cup in 2002 was
2-under, but that was with one best ball counted per team, per hole.
So what might be the winning score this year?
“I would say 4- or 5-under,” said Rhorer, who teamed with Sargent
to finish second in last year’s Jones Cup. “Everyone should get one
or two birdies [per hole], but each group will take some bogeys. The
question is how many birdies will you get?”
“It will take quite a few under par, but how many, I couldn’t
guess,” Collins said. “You should count on at least no worse than
par. People will be firing for birdies.”
A steady par player is a valuable commodity, Hahn said.
“If someone is steadily making pars, the other people can take
chances and make birdies,” Hahn said.
Whichever club emerges victorious by the early evening, will hoist
the new Jones Cup trophy, while the former Jones Cup and Tea Cup
Classic trophies will be retired. The names of prior Jones Cup and
Tea Cup winners will be engraved on the new trophy.
The sun might start to set by that time, but the simultaneous
dawning of a new era of golf in this area has already begun.
Welcome all to today’s Jones Cup.
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