Santa Ana Country Club seeks first Jones Cup championship

The Jones Cup will turn 20 years old when five neighboring country clubs meet for the annual golf tournament on June 26 at Shady Canyon Golf Club in Irvine.

Big Canyon, Mesa Verde, Newport Beach, Santa Ana and Shady Canyon will tee off for fun and bragging rights, starting at 12:30 p.m., but a win might mean the most to one team in particular.

Santa Ana has never won the Jones Cup, although it has played in every one. The club hosted the tournament last year, finishing in a tie for third place with Shady Canyon at five under par. Big Canyon won the title.

Geoff Cochrane, the director of golf at Santa Ana and the team captain, has been with the club for 17 years. He has been in his current position since June 2010.

Through the years, Cochrane has learned that the tournament’s scoring system, which takes the best two scores from a club’s five-person team on every hole, demands that players score in the red. Par simply will not get the job done.

“In this type of event, with two scores counting out of five, it really comes down to just holing some putts,” Cochrane said. “I know that we’ve had years where we hit it plenty fine and just didn’t make enough [putts] to get the momentum going.”

To that end, Cochrane believes there are assets on this year’s Santa Ana quintet that can help the club score low. Gavin Reid, the men’s club champion, has won the club title three consecutive years.

Senior champion Boyd Martin is another Jones Cup veteran, having won the men’s club championship eight times in the past.

Club professional Karl Hamilton and women’s club champion Diane Booth will both be playing in their first Jones Cup.

“Gavin kills it [off the tee], so we definitely have that,” Cochrane said. “Karl has been known to get the putter hot, too.”

A Jones Cup championship has eluded Santa Ana, and another feat has yet to be accomplished by any club in the history of the tournament. That would be a hole-in-one.

Fletcher Jones Motorcars and Audi Fletcher Jones are offering up a 2019 Mercedes-Benz E450 Cabriolet (valued at $76,000) or a 2019 Audi Q8 (valued at $82,000) if one of the competitors manages to hole out from the tee. It would be no small consolation prize in lieu of a Jones Cup title.

“I’ve never made a hole-in-one, so if I manage to do that by accident when there is a car up for the prize, that would be OK,” Cochrane chuckled. “That would be all right. I would be good with that.”

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andrew.turner@latimes.com

Twitter: @ProfessorTurner