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.