EDITORIAL:We're game

The decision by Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian to join up with World Team Tennis and the Newport Beach Breakers professional tennis team sure sounds like a grand slam from the start.

Dr. Alan Beyers probably put it best as to why.

"Not everyone likes golf," he said.

Of course, Beyers was referring to the enormous success of the Toshiba Classic senior golf tournament that each year nets the hospital some $1 million in charity.

This newest venture into tennis is the brainchild of Beyers, a Hoag-based orthopedic surgeon, and Jeff Purser, the tournament director for Toshiba, who along with World Team Tennis Commissioner Ilana Kloss decided to go into business together.

While the summer tennis matches, which will take place in a portable stadium built in the Newport Beach Country Club's parking lot, don't promise to be nearly as lucrative as Toshiba, they offer other community benefits and the ability to promote Hoag Hospital's name into the world of tennis.

We'd be remiss to not mention the star power of the Breakers.

Breakers team member Pete Sampras is slated for a return this summer, and blond bombshell Anna Kournikova is expected to arrive with her Sacramento Capitals team for a match that is sure to draw more than a few spectators.

There are also the youth outreach programs that are part of World Team Tennis, some of which include giving away brand new rackets to kids who can't afford them.

And the financial return to the hospital itself won't be nominal, with Purser predicting it should get into the six-figure level.

But more than anything, it is the belief of Beyer that tennis, like golf, is a sport that Hoag Hospital should be affiliated with.

So what came out of this decision is a first — a charity running a professional tennis team.

We're confident it will be match worth watching.