Jerry West And The Northern Trust Open

GolfDigest.com has posted my Jerry West feature from this week's Golf World. Thanks to the PGA Tour's Laura Hill and tournament general manager Mike Bone, I was able to enjoy unusual access to West on three different occasions as he traveled around the city promoting the Northern Trust Open.

As the story hopefully conveys, he's quite serious about beefing up the charitable giving aspect of the event formerly known as the L.A. Open. Several initiatives are off to good starts and there are some very nice upgrades to the event, including the "Birdies for the Brave" program that will include complimentary admission and a free hospitality tent for active and retired military members.

Corporate hospitality revenue figures to be increased substantially now that the Junior Chamber of Commerce has been replaced by the PGA Tour's Championship Management (the Junior Chamber remains the primary charitable beneficiary). Certainly the on-course presentation will continue to be the clean, understated, borderline sterile approach we've seen the last few years (and surely minus fan-friendly manual scoreboards because they do not flash the all-important FedEx Cup standings and other amazingly useless information). 

My sense is that West would like to have made a more dramatic overhaul in terms of the fan and corporate experience, but Northern Trust's bad press following last year's event has put them in lockdown mode. And in terms of charitable dollars raised, this first year will probably not make the strides West hopes for in large part due to the mind-bogglingly horrible decision to significantly raise ticket prices across the board.

A little comparison between 2009 and 2010:

• 2009 - $30 for adults, $25 for seniors and $20 for juniors. $5 saving for advance purchases. 

• 2010 - $35 in advance $50 at the gate, $30 for Senior Citizen 55 years and older (not available in advance), $30 at the gate Students with a valid student ID (not available in advance), Free Admission for 18 and under

So at-the-gate prices will be $20 higher than last year in the worst recession since the Great Depression. In a sports town that is notorious for last minute decision-making and which roundly rejected inflated ticket prices for the lightly-attended 1995 PGA and 1998 U.S. Senior Opens at Riviera. Throw in Super Bowl Sunday along with declining attendance numbers the last few years, and it's hard to envision even decent-sized galleries.

That said, here's a clip from my interview with West at his Bel-Air home. My apologies in advance for the low quality and paper rustling (what was I looking for in my notebook!?).

Here he is talking about how he got started playing golf, circa 1961: