It takes a partnership to create a successful golf tournament, Champions Tour competitor Jim Thorpe told members of the media gathered on a wet, spring morning at The Hills Country Club near Austin, Texas. It takes a club with a great golf venue, its members, volunteers, sponsors, the players and their families, the professional tours, the media, the fans, TV viewers … well, it almost takes a village.

Of course, it takes magnanimous winners like Thorpe, the 2005 FedEx Kinko’s Classic victor, who visited The Hills briefly to garner media support for the April playing of this year’s event. (It’s impossible to forget the emotion of Thorpe’s 2005 win and his decision on the 18th green to donate his first-place check of $247,500 to his church in Florida.) Thorpe was on his way to Mexico and another member of the ClubCorp family — Vista Vallarta Golf Club — to compete in the Puerto Vallarta Blue Agave Golf Classic.

A successful golf tournament also takes tradition. The LPGA Kraft Nabisco Championship celebrated its 35th anniversary this year at Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage, California. All but four past winners gathered for a dinner where each received a diamond ring commemorating her victory. During the weekend, several champions, who won before it became a tradition to jump into the lake next to the 18th green, got a chance to take the dip.

It takes sportsmanship and the proverbial agony of defeat. Annika Sorenstam had 11 consecutive wins when in the lead entering the final round. The Florida’s Natural Charity Championship Hosted by Nancy Lopez at Eagle’s Landing Country Club in Stockbridge, Georgia, however, altered that record. She lost by two strokes to 22-year-old Sung Ah Yim.

As I write this, it’s already been a storied year of professional golf for the ClubCorp family. As you read this, there are stories yet to be told — with the June 30-July 2 playing of the Greater Kansas City Golf Classic at the Nicklaus Golf Club at LionsGate in Overland Park, Kansas, and the Aug. 24-27 World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational at Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio (with Tiger defending the title).

Unfortunately, space does not allow the telling of all the stories of all the events. But everyone counted in Thorpe’s concept of partnership has won this year — especially the local charities that benefit from the proceeds of these tournaments. And, we might all agree, winning is good.


Patricia Baldwin
Editor In Chief
privateclubs@clubcorp.com


Photography by Lisa Means


AN AFFILIATE REMEMBERED
“FROM CHAOS TO COLORS.” That’s how restaurant industry magazine Santé characterized the opening of Colors, a restaurant in New York City’s Greenwich Village (417 Lafayette St.). Fifty surviving workers of Windows on the World have created the city’s first cooperative, employee-run restaurant. The menu is American, but changing specials will represent the more than 22 countries of the restaurant’s owners. Seventy-three employees of Windows were killed on Sept. 11, 2001, when the twin towers of the World Trade Center were destroyed. – Photography by Michael Tulipan