Toledo Finds Returning to the PGA Tour is Real Scream

The PGA Tour Qualifying Tournament may be the most gut-wrenching test of golf, but Esteban Toledo was certain the pressure wouldn’t get to him.

Toledo, after all, has entered each of the tournaments since 1986. Once he earned his PGA Tour card, and twice he missed the grade by only one stroke. He figures few in the field have more such experience.

This year’s tournament was held early this month at Grenelefe Resort in Haines City, Fla., and Toledo felt well-prepared for the six-day, 108-hole test.

“I was never nervous,” Toledo said, “I never felt the pressure in 102 holes, but coming in the final two or three holes . . .

“That’s what tour school is all about, especially when you are on the bubble. Your legs will start shaking.”

The quaking must have gotten worse when on the par-five 18th hole, Toledo sliced his second shot into the trees. A par on the hole would probably mean a tour card for 1998 and bogey would likely send him back to the Nike Tour.

“I started thinking,” Toledo said, “ ‘If I don’t get up and down, I’m going to lose it.’ ”

He never even needed to pull out his putter.

His third shot--a low six-iron from 130 yards--landed just short of the green and his chip-shot fourth went in the cup.

“I screamed when I made it,” Toledo said. “I screamed really loud. It was very embarrassing. I’ve never done that before.

“But at the moment I didn’t care. I was back on the tour. It was one of the greatest moments of my life.”

After his triumph--he finished eight-under par, two better than the final cutoff--Toledo returned to his Costa Mesa home to rest and start focusing on his return to the PGA Tour.

In 1994, he played in 28 PGA events, made the cut 12 times and earned $66,049, well short of what was required to retain a tour card.

This time, he believes, it will be different. He’s more experienced and realistic.

“I’m going back very hungry for success,” Toledo said, “and that’s going to be the key for me.

“It’s not going to be easy at all. I have a lot of work left to do.”

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Toledo will be joined on tour by another local pro: Steve Jurgensen, who lives in Newport Beach and also survived a scare late in his final round.

Trying a cut shot on the par-three 16th, Jurgensen pulled it out of bounds. He eventually made an eight-foot putt for double bogey--and dropped to six-under.

Jurgensen’s thoughts immediately were elsewhere. The Golf Channel was telecasting the event and some of Jurgensen’s family had just subscribed to the cable channel specifically to watch.

“All I could think of was, ‘I hope they didn’t see it,’ ” he said, “but I knew that they were panicking.”

Jurgensen didn’t. Told that he was still on pace to make the cut, he relaxed. On the 17th hole, he made a downhill, 15-foot putt for birdie and on the 18th, his sand wedge from 100 yards nearly went in, spinning back six-feet short of the hole. He made the birdie putt.

This will be Jurgensen’s second trip around the PGA Tour. In 1996, he earned $118,049, finishing 152nd on the money list.

Two others with local ties--Dan Bateman of Huntington Beach and Dennis Paulson, a Costa Mesa High graduate--failed to earn their tour card but finished high enough to be fully exempt on the 1998 Nike Tour--where they both played this year.

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Weathering the storm: With one exception, Orange County golf courses have recovered from the torrential rains of early this month. Aliso Creek, a nine-hole course in a Laguna Beach canyon, was heavily damaged and won’t reopen until March, said General Manager Ed Slymen.

The downpour on the morning of Dec. 6 caused the creek to overflow and destroy three greens, four bridges and the maintenance shed.

“When you get eight inches of rain in our watershed in a nine-hour period,” Slymen said, “there’s nothing you can do. You say a little prayer and hope no one is hurt.”

The flood waters also damaged the hotel, forcing it to shut down--Slymen hopes to have some rooms available this week. The restaurant remains open.

“I’m not crying,” Slymen said. “We’re in a fix-it mode. We’re done with the mourning and we’re just going to get it done.”

Most local golf businesses survived remarkably well, many opening the next day.

Some were hit harder.

NorthWood Golf Center, a driving range in Irvine, was closed for 10 days. The range’s landing area is in a water retention basin, which became a six-foot deep pond. The sediment remaining after the water drained was a time consuming cleanup project.

Several miles west, Strawberry Farms also took a pounding, but the rain has made the course even more picturesque. Five inches of rain fell in three hours in the area, a deluge that caused Sand Canyon Reservoir to rise 18 feet and flow into the spillway on one side of the dam.

The damage to the course was mostly cosmetic; it was shut down four days for cleanup. All 18 holes were open after six days.

“If you can sustain that kind of an onslaught,” General Manager Scott Chaffin said, “and still stand, you feel like you can handle anything.”

River View in Santa Ana also was back in full operation within a week, despite the fact that a good part of the course is in the bed of the Santa Ana River.

Co-owners Bob Keane and Steve Hart said the course recovers quickly because of a redesign completed nearly two years ago after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers finished its flood-control work on the river.

When it rains hard, River View must close nine holes, but the flow of the river has been slowed so that it no longer wreaks havoc on the fairways.

“A little rain is great--a half inch, three-quarter inch we don’t have any problem with that,” said co-owner Steve Hart. “Four inches, that will cause some headaches.”

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