Column: Local club golf tourneys have become legacy events

It is now the month of Manoa Cup — 114 years old and counting — and the year the Hawaii State Open returns for the first time since 2017— to Kapolei in December.

Those two iconic events celebrate our finest amateur and professional golfers annually. They are very different from a handful of tournaments hosted by private clubs between April and August, which are just as treasured in their own way.

One reason? People whose golf games are as quirky as mine, with swings as painful as Charles Barkley’s, can actually play in them. And, we can experience beautiful, historic and unique private courses.

My handicap index makes me eligible for the Jennie K. Wilson, Waialae and Oahu Country Club Women’s Invitationals. In other words, most women who golf can play them.

The Mid-Pacific Open and OCC Men’s Invitational surround their top players with flights ranging from A to old (call us “Seniors”).

Both tournaments at Mid-Pacific CC and the OCC Women started in 1950. The Waialae Women began in 1953 and the OCC Men a decade later.

Years have been missed since, but the 72nd Jennie K. just ended and applications are being accepted for next month’s (July 10-11) 66th Waialae Women’s.

In April, Shawn Lu became Mid-Pacific Open’s 64th champion. It is the only one of the five fan-favorite events that includes pros.

Applications are also out for the OCC events, set for July 14-16 (men) and Aug. 15-16 (women). Both could celebrate their 60th anniversaries before rail reaches downtown.

Even if those long histories are not an only-in-Hawaii phenomena — and a few of our golf leaders believe they could be — the unique atmospheres absolutely are.

The courses are located in beautiful Lanikai, Nuuanu and Kahala. Waialae is on the beach and the others have ocean views … and way beyond. Mid-Pacific’s layout provides a little of everything, OCC’s is ridiculously lush and never level and Waialae … well, it’s been good enough for the PGA Tour for nearly 60 years.

This year’s Mid-Pacific Open, with its $80,000 purse, spoke eloquently to that kind of tour quality. Lu and John Oda, teammates and state champions at Moanalua High School, came home to play and see family and friends — many on the Lanikai leaderboard — and finished 1-2. Both are chasing PGA Tour status on mini-tours and mainland events.

Alex Ching, who had Top 25 finishes on the PGA Tour’s Latinoamerica and China tours before coming home in 2018, won the previous two Mid-Pac Opens and is now playing again in Asia. Parker McLachlin and David Ishii won on the PGA Tour and at Mid-Pacific.

“From a sponsor’s perspective, what these tournaments invest in is community and professionals trying to make a living not just playing but teaching,” says Aloha Section PGA Executive Director Wes Wailehua, who helps manage the Mid-Pac Open. “Shawn Lu and John Oda are great players. When we see them win on tour it gives me a lot of pride. They are out on tour and here in the community they grew up in. When we write their check we make sure they go back out and represent the state of Hawaii.

“Success really comes back to continuity and the chairs involved.”

The clubs gain a few new members with the tournaments, but rarely break even — despite many generous sponsors — and ask an immense amount of their membership to put them on. Just ask Mike Kawaharada, the Mid-Pac Open chair in charge of 160 member volunteers the past 25 years.

All the tournaments’ champions lists are littered with Hawaii Golf Hall of Famers. Bev Kim has won Waialae Women’s in six different decades.

It’s safe to say that all the Hall of Famers learned more than winning at these events.

Kim, who has also won at OCC and Jennie K., says her most vivid memory in Lanikai came in the 1960s when she was playing with legend Billie Beamer, who was winning.

“We were walking up the 16th hole and I was dragging my okole,” Kim recalls. “So she puts her arm around me and says, ‘Bev, your time will come.’ I was 18. It took a long time for that to come but … I learned to just be patient.”

The legacies just keep living on, which is what the clubs and members seem to want most, to perpetuate the game. Most years, these tournaments fill their fields fast. Jennie K. and OCC have offered junior scholarships and discounts, along with school uniforms, while Waialae is known for fields that include players from 19 to 90.

The golfers — some who would never get to play the private courses if it weren’t for these events — treasure the opportunity. They have treasured it for decades now, along with legendary Jennie K. medals, rare opportunities to play with current and future Hall of Famers and simply making new golf friends, from all over, in a special atmosphere.

Atmosphere is almost everything for most of the women, along with memorable tee prizes — new Nike shoes everyone? — and lucky draws: “I try to take care of the 80 who don’t win,” says Paula Trask, who has led a resurgence of the OCC Women’s Invitational.

While the men clearly appreciate the wonderful nuances of these legacy events, they play hard, for hard-earned cash and gift certificates, and head home.

The women are known for raucous after-parties. Those have actually calmed dramatically since the luau and all-night music of the early Jennie K’s.

Just ask Waialae member Gerry Ornelles, who has played in more than 50 Waialae Women’s events and was once described as “a perpetual volunteer who saved the tournament from extinction.”

She is not alone, at Waialae or OCC and Mid-Pacific, where people like Keiki-Dawn Izumi — who finished second at Jennie K. twice — has played, chaired (with her mother Florence) and volunteered more than 50 years.

“Some say why are you doing this?” asks Jennie K. Chair Lorna Nishihara. “But then the legacy just goes on.”

And on and on … and on. These events have become a passion play thanks to the private club members and the Hawaii State Golf Association now includes most in its Player of the Year (and Senior Player) points systems of major events.

“The women, and men, that organize this tournament are phenomenal and so passionate about this tournament and I think that’s why it has lasted so long,” three-time Jennie K. winner Anna Murata said a few years ago in Lanikai. “They have made sure the history doesn’t diminish.”

And hasn’t, since 1950.