Golf’s Greatest Come to Play Roen’s Way

Say a person is a baseball fan and he throws a bash every year. Everyone comes to his place and plays a little baseball and has a good time.

This fellow has had DiMaggio, Williams, Ford, Mantle, Aaron, Mays, McCovey, Bench, Ryan, Rose, Carlton, Seaver, Mattingly, Gwynn, Boggs and Clemens.

This fellow’s bash spans generations.

Or maybe a person is a football fan and he throws a bash every year. Everyone comes to his place and plays a little football and has a good time.

This fellow has had Layne, Graham, Huff, Butkus, Nitschke, Groza, Dawson, Swann, Bradshaw, Ditka, Staubach, Taylor, Elway and Kosar.

This fellow’s bash spans generations.

All of this seems like fantasy, doesn’t it?

Not to a chap named Allard Roen. He has put together just such a bash in the world of golf. He put together a gathering called the Tournament of Champions, an annual good time with a golf tournament attached.

The 35th T of C begins today at La Costa.

Roen, managing partner of the La Costa resort, organized the first Tournament of Champions at the Desert Inn in Las Vegas in 1953. He has been general chairman of every T of C, this week’s being the 19th at La Costa.

The concept is unique. Roen has no control over who comes to his party. The guests must win their way to the T of C. A golfer can earn $400,000 on the tour, but he doesn’t get to the T of C if he doesn’t win a tournament.

“This is a purest tournament on the tour,” Roen said this week. “I can’t just bring in anyone I like. I can’t bring in Arnold Palmer just because I’d like to invite Arnold Palmer.”

Consequently, Palmer will not be at La Costa this week. He did not win a tournament in 1986. The T of C also has a division for seniors, but Palmer didn’t win a seniors event either.

Sorry, Arnie.

Sorry, Allard, too.

When Roen reminisces, he invariably recalls Arnold Palmer.

Palmer won his first T of C in 1962, with what came to be his trademark. He charged through the last round in pursuit of Billy Casper, and won the tournament with a 24-foot putt from off the last green.

The tournament Roen remembers most fondly, the 1966 T of C at the Desert Inn, also was won by Palmer.

“We used to have an 18-hole playoff the next day,” Roen said, “and Arnold Palmer and Gay Brewer were tied after Sunday. Monday came up blowing and cold, a real sandstorm. Arnold shot a 69 and Gay Brewer shot a 73. Over dinner that night, Arnold told me it was probably one of the greatest rounds he ever played.”

It was much greater than a round--or at least a hole--he played at La Costa in 1972. Palmer hit his first three shots in the water on the Par 3 seventh hole.

Roen laughed.

“He turned around and asked if he could start over,” Roen said.

Alas, Arnold Palmer won’t be around for either heroics in an unlikely (at La Costa) sandstorm or hysterics at a pond. Of course, Allard Roen will be there. He has never missed.

He watched a 23-year-old named Jack Nicklaus beat Tony Lema and Palmer by five strokes in 1963.

He watched a guy named Bobby Mitchell sink a 50-foot putt to beat Nicklaus in a playoff in 1972.

He watched Al Geiberger misread a green, but beat Gary Player in a 1975 playoff when he hit his putt so far off the intended line that it went in anyway.

He watched Lanny Wadkins conquer the monster 17th with fairway drivers en route to victories in 1982 and 1983.

He watched Calvin Peete, with a caddy named Golf Ball, tear La Costa apart with a record 267 in 1986. He had never watched anyone do that to his course.

And he watched duffers named Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Walter Winchell kibitzing through contests on the putting green. After all, they were ineligible for the tournament itself.

Allard Roen has seen all this, and so much more, in his years as general chairman of this brainchild.

Roen, who attended Duke University on a baseball scholarship and graduated with a degree in industrial management, is one of those fellows who always looks as if it’s summer in his world. He is always impeccably dressed, neatly coiffed and deeply tanned.

A publicity biography describes Roen as the “longest reigning tournament chairman.” In this case, Roen really does reign. La Costa is his castle and his kingdom.

And the golf course is his playground.

Roen thought the golf courses in Las Vegas were good, but he figured the terrain in La Costa’s coastal valleys was perfect for a great golf course. It was a little rough in its virgin form, so Roen made his first tour of the landscape on horseback. He could close his eyes and envision Nicklaus and Player and Palmer stalking those valleys.

The difference, to Roen, was that he did not have to fantasize throwing a party and having such fellows come for a visit.

Golf’s elite want to visit Roen, La Costa and the Tournament of Champions.

“Love to have you,” Roen might say to an aspiring guest. “Just win, baby, and we’ll roll out the green carpet.”