Richard Dunn
With its new colorful Web site, charity outreach, essay contest and
endless list of supporting golf professionals and civic dignitaries,
Yardley VII has become more than a golf tournament.
It is a full-scale community event, and, for the organizers, a work of
art ready to come off the easel.
"Gorgeous" George Yardley, the Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer and
Newport Harbor High alumnus (circa 1946), is once again giving back to
the institution that helped groom him for greatness, serving as the
headliner for the June 26 event at Newport Beach Golf Course to benefit
the ever-expanding Newport Harbor golf program.
Last year, the Yardley extravaganza launched an essay contest for
students, won by Princeton-bound John Swigart, and began a community
outreach for Olive Crest Home and Services for Abused Children.
Members of the Newport Harbor golf team, spearheaded this year by senior
Mitch Johns (headed for USC), constructed a portable driving range at
Olive Crest and administered a golf clinic for the children on a periodic
basis for six months before the spring season started.
The reaction of the Olive Crest children was poignant, according to Bruce
Akins, a volunteer parent who will serve as tournament chairman in 2001,
replacing the vivacious Buck Johns.
"(The children) were interested more in the interaction with our kids,"
Akins said. "For them, it was more important for our kids just showing up
and being friendly."
The strategy is for the outreach to continue in September, with members
of the Newport Harbor girls golf team, who play their season in the fall,
to take the baton from the boys and carry out the Olive Crest clinic next
spring when the boys play their season.
Some of the pros expected to participate in Yardley VII include Big
Canyon Country Club Director of Golf Bob Lovejoy and head pro Kelly
Manos, Costa Mesa Golf & Country Club head pro Brad Booth, Santa Ana
Country Club Director of Golf Mike Reehl and Pelican Hill Golf Club PGA
pro and Director of Instruction Glenn Deck.
"It is fascinating how many pros (at least 13) participate," Buck Johns
said. "(It is) clearly the biggest group of professionals in one charity
tournament in Orange County ... and they have a grand time."
Yardley, a former Stanford All-American, scored an NBA-leading 2,001
points for the Detroit Pistons in 1957-58 during his Hall of Fame career,
becoming the first to crack the 2,000-point barrier in an NBA season.
The event, which raised more than $40,000 last year for the Newport
