The Sacramento, Calif., property’s President and General Manager fought to host the 2015 event, preparing with a $13 million course renovation 10 years ago and convincing officials that the club and local economy were financially viable.
Dan Spector has made his living for two decades as a trust and probate litigator, but his passion for the past five years has been bringing the U.S. Senior Open to Del Paso Country Club in Sacramento, Calif., the Sacramento Bee reported.
Five months after Spector let the United States Golf Association know that Del Paso wanted to host a national championship, and with the recently renovated club impressing many within the organization of its worthiness in the interim, the club’s then-president found himself on the phone with Tim Flaherty at the USGA’s New Jersey headquarters, the Bee reported.
Flaherty, the official then in charge of doling out most of the USGA’s 15 annual championships, said he had heard good things about Del Paso and was ready to talk about the club hosting an event—the Men’s Team State competition, the Bee reported.
“I argue for a living, and I understand the value of silence,” Spector said. “I let it hang. After about 25 seconds, I said, ‘Tim, I appreciate that thought, but that’s not the one we want.’
“He said, ‘Well, what is it that you want, Dan?’ I said, ‘We want the U.S. Senior Open.’”
Flaherty then explained that the USGA makes most of its revenue from the U.S. Open. The Senior and Women’s Opens are also profitable and help fund the dozen championships that aren’t, the Bee reported.
As Spector recalls the conversation, Flaherty then said, “So you’re asking me to entrust to you the second-most-important tournament that the USGA runs?”
Spector: “That’s right.”
Flaherty: “OK then, I had better come check it out.”
Del Paso, opened in 1916, is Sacramento’s oldest and most storied course. It has hosted four USGA championships—the 1957 U.S. Women’s Amateur, the 1964 U.S. Women’s Senior Amateur, the 1976 U.S. Women’s Amateur and the 1982 U.S. Women’s Open—but by the time the new century hit, it wasn’t on anybody’s list of championship courses, the Bee reported.
The practice facilities were inadequate, the general condition of the course was deteriorating and its length, at 6,300 yards, rendered it obsolete to even the area’s best players, the Bee reported.
Del Paso’s leadership began interviewing architects with the idea of making incremental changes to spruce up the traditional parkland course. They came across one, Granite Bay-based Kyle Phillips, who saw something in the 150-acre property that no one else had: the ability for a total transformation to bring the course back to contemporary, and just maybe championship, standards, the Bee reported.
“The view of themselves and what they could be was less than what I thought they could be,” Phillips said.
Phillips’ vision stuck, and after an arduous years-long informational campaign, the club’s membership voted in 2004 in favor of a $13 million renovation. After an 18-month closure and a complete reroute and redo that included the removal of 1,000 trees, a new 7,000-yard course emerged in 2006, the Bee reported.
It’s nearly impossible today to design a course that works for 20-handicappers and touring pros, even senior ones, Phillips said. Yet he did so with wide fairways that can be narrowed with rough, strategic bunkering that penalizes all calibers of player fairly and greens that feature plenty of benign hole locations for higher handicappers and subtly difficult ones for scratch players, the Bee reported.
Crafting a venue that could again host a national championship was always secondary to revitalizing the course and the membership, all involved say, but the tournament component, spoken about or not, was always present, the Bee reported.
“The story is not done there,” Phillips said. “There are more good days ahead.”
Spector joined Del Paso in 2002 but wasn’t part of the politics ahead of the renovation. He was a 20-handicapper basically learning the game. By 2010, he was a low single-digit handicapper who competed for the club championship and was about to become club president. Despite an economic downturn that proved to be an ongoing challenge, he wanted to pursue a national championship for his club, the Bee reported.
Spector introduced his agenda to the club’s board two weeks ahead of the annual April Fools’ Day changing of the guard, a Del Paso tradition. He wanted to strengthen the club’s brand in the community and lead through golf, the Bee reported.
“I asked permission for (General Manager) Bob (Kunz) and I to chase (the Senior Open),” he said. “After the board meeting, I went into Bob’s office. I looked at him. He looked at me. And I said, ‘Do you know anybody?’”
Del Paso started with Brian Whitlark, a USGA agronomist the club and its superintendent, Mark McKinney, had gotten to know while implementing labor-intensive and expensive best-maintenance practices for its new rye-grass fairways and bent-grass greens, the Bee reported.
“As a result of those sacrifices and investments, the USGA knew about us,” Spector said. “We were on their radar from an agronomic standpoint.”
Del Paso then involved Brian Flajole, who lives in Granite Bay and ran the LPGA Tour’s Longs Drugs Challenge for Bruno Events Team, which has overseen 17 of the past 21 U.S. Senior and Women’s opens. Flajole, who became U.S. Senior Open championship director, convinced Spector that his involvement would get Del Paso a deeper look, the Bee reported.
“Bob, Brian and I have met every week for almost five years,” Spector said. “There’s no way this happens without Bob, from beginning to end. Mark McKinney, because of his work and how good he is at it, he’s a big part of the story. The USGA had sufficient concerns about our community that I don’t think we get it without Brian and Bruno, either.”
For six months after a January 2011, USGA visit, Del Paso heard nothing. Then in October 2011, Flaherty, USGA managing director Jeff Hall and Tom O’Toole, in line to become USGA president, visited Sacramento. Flaherty and Hall had walked every inch of Del Paso during several previous visits. It was O’Toole’s first trip, the Bee reported.
The course was no longer the concern, they said. It was the Sacramento economy. With the departure of the Kings appearing likely, the city looked eerily like Seattle, which lost the SuperSonics before the 2008-09 season and then was lukewarm in its support of the 2010 U.S. Senior Open at Sahalee, the only Senior Open that almost lost money, Spector was told.
With USGA representatives on one side of the table and Del Paso’s people on the other, according to Spector, O’Toole said: “I like the golf course, but I have concerns about Sacramento. It seems like a nice place, but the economy isn’t great. Do you understand the degree to which you have to make a financial commitment in order for this to be a success for you and the USGA?”
O’Toole told Spector that the cost would run $3 million, the Bee reported.
A month later, for the first time in the history of a USGA event, Spector said, a potential host club was asked to present a due diligence report showing they were financially viable to host. Within 45 days, a committee led by then-Del Paso president Russ Porter secured commitments representing $1 million, the Bee reported.
“Word got back to us from the USGA that we had far exceeded their expectations and (our selection chances) looked very good,” Spector said.
Del Paso received word in January 2012 that it was awarded the 2015 U.S. Senior Open. The official announcement came in April. Del Paso had wanted the 2016 event, to coincide with the club’s centennial anniversary, but later learned that the 2016 championship was awarded to Scioto Country Club in Columbus, Ohio, also celebrating its 100th year and where Jack Nicklaus grew up and learned to play.
“You can’t compete with Jack Nicklaus,” Spector said. “In golf, Jack wins.”
The past five years have flown by for Spector, 49, the championship’s general chairman and the person most responsible for bringing the U.S. Senior Open to Sacramento, the Bee reported.
The First Tee of Greater Sacramento will be the sole charitable beneficiary of food concessions and program sales, per Spector’s wishes. The local chapter is estimated to reap $100,000. All standard-bearers will be First Tee members, and food and program booths will be manned by First Tee volunteers, the Bee reported.
Spector has no connection to the First Tee. He’s simply impressed with the mission of the youth development organization that was conceived in Sacramento by Haggin Oaks’ Ken Morton Sr., a former Del Paso caddie, and Les Streeper, a former Del Paso pro, the Bee reported.
The Kings stayed in Sacramento, the economy has improved and Del Paso ultimately did more than $4 million in hospitality sales. It’s a win-win-win for the club, the USGA and the city’s golf-starved fans who are expected to show up 125,000 strong this week, the Bee reported.
“From most metrics, we’re in the top five or six in the (35-year) history of the U.S. Senior Open, and that feels pretty good,” Spector said.
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