Driving for dollars

Has the popularity of charity golf tournaments on the North Shore become too much of a good thing?

By Bob Albright

Like the swings you see off the first tee, they come in all shapes and sizes.

On any Monday morning from early April to late October you can’t swing a 7-iron without hitting one. They come complete with countless different formats and gift bags filled with goodies ranging from six-packs of Guinness to Red Sox-Yankees tickets.

More than 775,000 charity tournaments are played each year according to the National Golf Foundation and the North Shore can claim its fair share. On the fundraising fairway they continue to soar past car washes, telethons and bake sales, raising millions of dollars each year for causes as large as cancer and as specific as memorial scholarships.

The bottom line is a simple one: Golfers will always look for an excuse to play and with a wide, and limitless, number of worthy causes out there they’ve got enough reasons to stay between the tee boxes right through October. For proof, look no further than the “Tourney Time” pages of this magazine.

There was a time not too long ago, however, when charity on the golf course meant little more than spotting your buddy another mulligan on the back nine.

Monday madness

“Monday maintenance day” used to mean just that at many local private clubs. It was a day when most courses were closed to the membership in order to allow the grounds crew, and a few caddies, to have the run of the place and get things back in order for another busy week of play.

But in 1970 Mike Frangos, the owner of the Commodore Restaurant in Beverly, looked past the lawnmowers and saw an opportunity. Looking for a way to help his good friend Paul Mansur and his organization, the North Shore ARC (Association for Retarded Citizens), the well-connected restaurateur got an idea for a golf outing. What about holding a tourney each year at one of the prestigious local private clubs, capitalizing on the one day that the club was available?

“We started out with 48 players,” remembers Frangos, a long-time Salem Country Club member whose restaurant closed for business in 2000 after a 45-year run as one of the area’s most well known eateries. “From there it grew every year.”

And how. Thirty-four years later, the Commodore Invitational Golf Tournament is one of the longest running consecutive tourneys in the entire country, as well as one of the most profitable. After netting $1,200 in its initial year, the tournament surpassed the $1 million mark last year. Even back then, Frangos had a firm grasp of the keys to a successful tournament.

“It was important to get a lot of the best golfers and make them chairmen for the tournament,” says Frangos who has held the Commodore predominantly at five of the area’s top private courses: Salem CC, Kernwood CC, Myopia Hunt CC, Essex CC and Tedesco CC. This year’s event is set for Myopia on Sept. 20.

“They spread the word within the clubs and got other members to play. We have had so many dedicated people on our tournament committee. Most of them stayed involved with it for the first 25 years.”

The initial tournament fee back in 1970 was – gulp – $25. For that, you not only got a round at an elite course, but dinner at the Commodore complete with an open bar.

“It wasn’t hard to get people,” Frangos points out. “People were getting a chance to play a course they normally wouldn’t be able to and it was for a great cause.”

Today, Frangos’ tournament is as strong as ever – no small accomplishment given the multitude of tournaments that have sprung up and filled the calendar around it.

“There’s certainly more Monday traffic than there used to be,” Frangos says. “We’re all bumping into each other now.”

Today, corporate and private tournaments are a staple at most golf courses. With two days a week reserved especially for tournaments and other functions at Ferncroft CC in Danvers, David Trull’s phone number resides on the speed dial list of numerous local charitable organizations.

“Last year we did right around 85 Monday and Thursday events,” says Trull, the Golf Outing Coordinator at Ferncroft.

It’s a total that Trull notes was even higher just a few years back before the dot.com boom fizzled, sending many well-heeled corporate tournaments into the drink. What hasn’t faltered, however, is a strong core of 10-to-15 charity events held each year at the resort.

“The corporate climate has changed, but with that we’ve gotten more in touch with our charity events,” Trull says.

Planning is paramount

While the common perception is that a successful charity tournament can be pulled together in a month – and some have been – the reality is that the most profitable ones are the result of a year or more of planning.

“Advance planning is crucial,” says Trull. “I always tell people starting out that if you’re planning on three months [of organization], you’re going to need at least six. And if you’ve got three people on your committee, you’re going to want at least double or triple that.”

Why the extra time? Most small tournaments start out with a simple formula of tacking on a small surcharge to the net price of a foursome to come up with their charitable donation, but the real money lies off the fairways in the form of raffles, auctions and corporate sponsorship.

A staple on the local charity circuit each season is the Salem Five Cent Bank tournament. In each of the last two years the bank has cut 25 $1,000 checks to various local charities.

The tournament’s success can be traced to the year-round efforts of a dedicated committee, which not only works to fill the field, but also vigorously shakes the local corporate tree for donations and sponsorships. From the local restaurant gift certificates that find their way into the gift bags to larger auction items up for bid at the dinner afterwards, players have a lot more to shoot for than just the pins. Of course, the fact that the tournament has been held at the Salem Country Club the last two years hasn’t hurt turnout either.

“We’re trying to give everyone a lot,” says Salem Five VP Ken Ellis, who is instrumental in the event as well as equally successful tournaments benefiting two local catholic high schools, Bishop Fenwick and St. Mary’s of Lynn.

“We’re giving them lunch and dinner and a nice gift. After people sign up for these things they just want to play golf. They don’t want to get nickeled and dimed. We make sure we keep the numbers low to keep the rounds to four or four and a half hours and afterward we try to keep it going to get everyone home by 8:30.”

There’s a definite lesson to be learned there. Trull recalls what looked like a promising memorial tournament that teed off a few years back at Ferncroft with a whopping 190 golfers squeezed into 38 fivesomes. Seven hours later, most golfers were in no mood to sit through a dinner and raffle and he’s yet to hear from the tourney since.

The Salem Five outing actually has a lengthy waiting list. It’s the exception rather than the rule, however, in today’s competitive environment that sees charities vie against each other to fill out their fields.

Competition for players fierce

With an ever-expanding list of tournaments, and a fixed pool of golfers to draw from, over saturation is a major concern.

“I think the saturation point has definitely hit,” notes Trull. “You look at our course where we might have a different tournament each week in May and they’re all competing against each other to try to get the same golfers.”

Bill Flynn’s Far Corner in Boxford hosts its share of charity events each season, but Director of Golf Bob Flynn admits that he doesn’t have to line up as many carts in front of the clubhouse as he used to.

“It used to be every tournament we hosted used to have 144 players – the full shotgun – but we’ve noticed a little decline the past few years,” Flynn admits. “I think the reason is that there are just so many tournaments out there. If you wanted to you could play a different outing every day of the week on the North Shore.”

The North Shore Chamber of Commerce puts on three tournaments each summer. Chamber president Bob Bradford says he has noticed a drop-off in that field and admits the landscape has changed.

“We’re lucky in that we have a pretty captive audience,” say Bradford, whose organization will tee it up this summer with tournaments at Turner Hill, Ferncroft and Kernwood. “But I know other ones have had a tough time. I can remember when we first started doing the series in the ’80s and there were a lot less tournaments out there.”

Trull says that the saturation point has even drifted into post-tournament raffles and auctions where organizers struggle to find new and enticing items to auction off.

“It used to be that you could have a hockey stick signed by a couple of Bruins you never heard of and there would always be some guy there who would pay $200 or $300 bucks just to say he had it,” Trull says. “Nowadays, you see those items get unpacked at the start of the evening and packed back into the trunk at the end of the night.”

A tourney for ‘Joe Peabody’

One of the most unique– and popular– charity tournaments is the annual Peabody Day Tournament, held each year at the Salem Country Club.

One day each summer the members hand over the pristine fairways of the Donald Ross gem in Peabody to local residents and city employees.

Unlike other tournaments, filling out both the morning and afternoon shotgun is never an issue, but crowd control at Peabody City Hall on the morning of registration certainly is.

Picture your local Ticketron booth the day Springsteen at Fenway Park tickets are doled out and you get the idea. It’s a scene that is predictable given the course’s stature combined with a rock bottom price (usually between $50-75 dollars) that ensures that no one is left out.

“It’s a day for ‘Joe Peabody’ to come play golf at the Salem Country Club,” Salem CC member Joe O’Boyle has said of the event, which also includes lunch and some major league hole-in-one prizes. It was O’Boyle who helped come up with the idea as part of the club’s centennial celebration in 1995 as a way for the membership to show its gratitude to the town.

While the obvious reflection of that gratitude is the sight of the course engulfed by everyday “Joes” from all walks of life in Peabody, an equally considerable one is the thousands of dollars the tourney has raised in scholarships for Peabody students.

In fact, the tournament has been so successful that it prompted the membership at nearby Kernwood CC in Salem to do the same at their course one day a year for Salem residents. And this past May, Tedesco CC held a Swampscott Golf Day at its course.

The lure of playing a private course is a surefire way to fill out a tourney field but so too is the chance to tee it up in honor of a former friend, co-worker, or loved one, who has passed away. At the core of all charity golf outings are memorial tournaments.

While they often do not benefit from the large corporate sponsorship and the extras of the more established events, they’re the ones that most golfers return to year after year for the same obvious reasons. Tournaments like the Stephen O’Grady Memorial Tournament tee off each week on the North Shore and serve as outlets for friends to gather and remember.

Now in its fifth year, the Stephen O’Grady Foundation has raised nearly $24,000 in scholarships in the name of the beloved Little League coach and Executive Director of the Salem Boys and Girls Club, who was tragically killed by in an automobile accident in 1999. A large assist goes to the City of Salem, which has donated its course, Olde Salem Greens, free of charge for the tournament.

“We don’t have any of the big corporate sponsors and what it is is a real grass roots effort,” says Beth O’Grady, Steve’s sister and the foundation’s president. O’Grady sees the annual tourney as bittersweet.

“It’s what you make out of it. It’s emotional, but if you look at it as here are all these friends of Steve smiling and joking and taking to the links for him, it makes you happy.”

The tourney, which this year tees off Monday, August 23rd, has traditionally offered both a morning and afternoon flight, but will just have one morning flight this year.

“With so many non-profits out there it is competitive, but that’s a good thing. They’re all providing so many scholarships, which is great,” says O’Grady, who is proud that the tourney has stayed true to the fun-loving and down-to-earth qualities of its namesake.

“We like to think that we get a certain amount out of people each year because of their connection with Steve, but we also like to think the reason that a lot of people come back each year is because we make it fun.”

Like any other type of fundraising event, sponsors can make a, well, gigantic difference. Giant Glass has stepped up to the plate for the annual Bishop Fenwick tournament, which raised some $29,000 last year. Likewise, it’s hard to underestimate what the Boston Private Bank and Trust’s sponsorship has meant to Frangos and the Commodore Tournament.

“What we bring to the table is the ability to network and spread the word about the North Shore ARC,” points out the bank’s president, Mark Thompson.

With the help of these kinds of sponsorships, the Commodore Tournament has been able to make a huge impact to the ARC by funding mobile care units, several halfway houses and the Cape Ann Child Intervention Center. It is improvements like these that are the ultimate reward and the ones that will leave a lasting impact on tournament organizers and recipients alike long after the last autographed putter has been auctioned off.

“The most rewarding thing for me is meeting the families,” says Frangos.

“They’re so appreciative of what the North Shore ARC has been able to do for them. It’s very touching.”