Sold out

The best two words any golf tournament can hear are o7 sold outf7

, especially for a first-time event.

With co-chairman Mitch Barker and Kevin Murphy at the controls, the

Inaugural Tee Off for Technology Classic has gone from small computer

chip to blue-chip stock.

The event, hosted by Santa Ana Country Club on Monday, benefits the

Newport Harbor High Educational Foundation and raises funds for

much-needed technology at the school, long considered a top academic

public school.

The goal, according to Barker, is to generate $50,000 to update the

technology available to students. The Newport Harbor Educational

Foundation is a nonprofit public benefit corporation.

Dennis Paulson, who has flirted with the Top 30 on the PGA Tour this

year, will attend the event’s reception if his international playing

schedule permits. Paulson (Costa Mesa High) grew up playing Santa Ana

Country Club and is an honorary member there.

Esteban Toledo (Newport Beach Country Club), who finished high enough

to retain his PGA Tour card for 2000, has also been invited and could

attend, Barker said.

Former Newport Harbor quarterback Shane Foley, a member of the Daily

Pilot Sports Hall of Fame, could be involved in the tournament -- if not

this year, in the future.

The tournament will be a Texas Scramble (use the group’s best drive,

then play your own ball), and will feature a clinic by long-drive hitter

Gary Hambright and a barbecue lunch served on the course. It will be a

shotgun start at 10:30 a.m., with a party following at 4 p.m.

Registration starts at 8 a.m.

“It’s going to be a real rock-and-roll, fast-paced event,” said

Barker, who announced last week that the tournament field was full.

The public is invited to the party (cocktails and hors d’oeuvres

only), which includes a raffle and live auction. Tickets are available to

the 19th hole for $30. Details: (949) 723-1212.

Early in Payne Stewart’s professional golf career, he played in the

old Crosby Southern Pro-Am, the Irvine Coast Country Club clambake (now

Newport Beach Country Club) that benefited Hoag Hospital.

The news of Stewart’s death Monday in a plane crash was tragic.

Before his two U.S. Open victories and PGA Championship win, before

Stewart was known for knickers and a sweet swing, he was playing golf’s

minor leagues -- mostly in Asia, where he won twice in 1981.

Just a few months before Stewart captured his first PGA Tour victory

at the 1982 Quad Cities Open, he played at Newport Beach. In the ’82

Crosby Southern (later the Taco Bell Newport Classic Pro-Am), Ed

Dougherty won by three strokes over Jim Booros and Larry Mize. Stewart’s

finish that year is still being researched.

The affable Gary Player of the Senior PGA Tour was in town Tuesday

playing with executives from Toshiba in a corporate outing at Pelican

Hill Golf Club.

Player, in Southern California for the Pacific Bell Senior Classic at

Wilshire Country Club, signed with Toshiba as a representative three

years ago during the Toshiba Senior Classic at Newport Beach Country

Club.

Pelican Hill hosted the Toyota Lexus/Boy Scout Invitational Golf

Tournament and Toledo and Brad Faxon of the PGA Tour gave a private

clinic Monday in a fund-raiser for the Boy Scouts of America, Orange

County Council.

FYI: The National Golf Foundation has released its golfer spending

report for 1998, and it shows that total spending on playing fees (cart,

green, dues), practice range fees, golf equipment, golf apparel, food and

beverage at golf facilities, and miscellaneous items such as “gifts,” was

over $30 billion.

Richard Dunn’s golf column appears every Thursday.