I was fortunate enough to be involved with the second event ever held on the Ben Hogan Tour (now the Nationwide Tour). The Ben Hogan Yuma Open in February of 1990 was the second event of a bold experiment instigated by PGA Tour Commissioner Deane Beman. The first year each of these events had a $100,000 purse sponsored by the Ben Hogan Company. The idea was that the players who did not earn their cards at the finals of PGA Tour Qualifying School plus the players just outside the top 125 of the money list would provide strong fields to play in some smaller markets around the country. One of the requirements to host a Ben Hogan tour event was that the host site could not be within 50 miles of an existing PGA Tour event. With PGA tour events in Tucson, Phoenix and Las Vegas there were not many sites in Arizona or Southern Nevada that met the criteria. Originally the event was scheduled at a course under construction in Laughlin, Nevada. Sometime around the middle of November 1989 I received a call from our PGA Section asking whether we had enough support in Yuma to put together a tour event and Pro-Am in just over two months. I responded that we could do it and although my golf course, Yuma Golf & Country Club seemed like the obvious choice for the event, I had a feeling that the whole community would get behind the event if it was held at Desert Hills Municipal Golf Course. Desert Hills is an excellent city course with a Convention Center and abundant parking adjacent to the course. With the backing of the City of Yuma we committed to an event that should have taken a full year to plan and by accepting the event we committed to providing the excellence expected by the PGA Tour operation. The Head Professional at Desert Hills, Don King, and I were invited to attend a planning meeting in Ponte Vedra, Florida the first week in December. We showed up at PGA Tour headquarters and I believe the meetings were held in a nearby Marriot Hotel. Each of approximately 30 events sent a team of two to four people for these meetings and there was a great deal of excitement as PGA Tour Commissioner Deane Beman opened the meeting by introducing Bob Dickson as Director of the Ben Hogan Tour. Dickson and Beman started with a detailed description of event organization and spent the last half hour before our first break talking about how prior to the cut the field tees off utilizing a “double tee start”. A double tee start sends players off the first and tenth tee in a morning and afternoon wave. Feeling that the meetings were a little bit too serious, Don and I decided to test the sense of humor of Beman and Dickson. During the break we introduced ourselves and noted our circumstance of being only two weeks into the planning stage in Yuma. Don started off, “Mr. Beman, about the double tee start?” Beman said, “Yes, you have a question?” I stepped in and said, “ Will a double tee start work if we have only a nine hole golf course?” Both Dickson and Beman looked at each other in absolute speechless horror until Don and I both started giggling like schoolgirls. I think Dickson had a better sense of humor than Beman, as he would at least speak to us throughout the rest of the meetings. I remember at the end of the meetings we played the TPC Sawgrass in a scramble and I was paired with Hall of Fame basketball coach Pat Summit who was representing the event from Tennessee.
We did not win and she was not happy about that (she always wins). In just two days I had upset the Commissioner of the PGA Tour, The Director of the Ben Hogan Tour and the All-Time winningest coach in NCAA basketball history. Fortunately the actual event was an absolute hit with great community involvement, great money raised for charity and a perfect execution of a “double tee start”.
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