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Sports Watch
RIGHT now, golfers from Stanford are hot, hot, hot. Imagine the golf team Stanford had a couple of years ago with Tiger Woods, Notah Begay III and Casey Martin. Ex-Stanford,
pro football star
tees it upWell, I had a chance to play with another golfer from Stanford on Monday at Leilehua.
"I went to Stanford on a football scholarship, not a golf scholarship. You can tell," said Darrin Nelson.
Nelson is now an associate athletic director at his alma mater, where the running back set an NCAA record for total yardage (rushing and receiving) when he ended his collegiate career in 1982.
He went on to play 12 seasons in the National Football League and still holds the total yardage record for the Minnesota Vikings. Nelson spent two years with the San Diego Chargers in between two hitches with the Vikings.
As an associate AD involved with marketing, media relations and the Internet for Stanford, Nelson was invited by the University of Hawaii, along with a number of athletic directors, to play in a goodwill 36-hole golf tournament at Leilehua and Hawaii Prince.
Also here were ADs from BYU (Val Hale), Rice (Bobby May), Fresno State (Allen Bohl), Boise State (Gene Bleymaier), San Jose State (Chuck Bell), UC-Santa Barbara (Gary Cunningham), UNLV (Charles Cavagnaro) and Eastern Illinois (Rich McDuffie).
Chuck Shelton, executive director of the new Silicon Valley Bowl, also took part in the tournament.
The event - called the Paradise in the Pacific Golf Tournament - will be an annual summer affair, according to UH athletic director Hugh Yoshida.
"It's a way to share the aloha spirit because this is a special place," said Yoshida, who expects future tournaments to get a bigger response now that it's established.
"We've been talking about doing something like this for a couple of years, but the timing was never right until this year," Yoshida said.
The visitors had a chance to meet 19 of UH's corporate sponsors, who underwrote the $127,500 tournament.
Major donors Hawaiian Airlines and Outrigger helped with the air and hotel accommodations, respectively.
GOLF might have been the piece de resistance, but it was a chance to share marketing ideas and build better relations for the future.
Better relations? BYU?
"We'd like nothing better than to play Hawaii in football again," said Hale.
As for the golf itself, it wasn't surprising that the best round - 4-under-par 68 - was recorded by UH men's golf coach Ronn Miyashiro on the first day at Leilehua.
Hale told Rice's May that he shot a 37 on the front nine and a 46 on the back for an 83.
"Whoa. What happened in the second half," May said. "Who gave the halftime speech?"
As for Nelson, let's just say that he went to Stanford on a football, not golf, scholarship. But he enjoyed himself, and that's what golf is all about.
He only took up the game recently, and doesn't play as often as he would like.
Nelson remembers his very first trip to Hawaii - for the 1982 Hula Bowl.
"I don't remember much about the game except that we won and it was hot," said Nelson, a Hula Bowl teammate of UH's Gary Allen and Dana McLemore.
Interestingly, Nelson, who originally came from Los Angeles, really wanted to play for California - Stanford's biggest rival - because he was a big fan of Joe Roth, the Bears' quarterback, who later died of cancer.
"They thought I was too small," Nelson said.
Big mistake.