Columnist Dean Juipe: TPC owners bored by pro golf

Dean Juipe

Monday, April 24, 2000 | 9:22 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

Just as youth can be wasted on the inexperienced, wealth can be wasted on the rich.

That truism was never more evident than Sunday at the TPC at Summerlin, where the final round of the PGA Senior Tour's $1.4 million Las Vegas Senior Classic was played to only marginal interest.

It's not that the crowds were bad or undersized; they were comparable to what the tournament has drawn in recent years. But what stood out this time after walking the course was the complete disinterest of those who own the 150 or so homes that border these scenic 18 holes.

If it wasn't for the players and galleries, the setting would have qualified as a ghost town.

Among the aesthetics of this beautiful course are the homes that line it, each of which is worth a fortune. These are extravagant structures with price tags well into the millions.

Yet on a day when seemingly every one of these lucky home owners should have been hosting a party and celebrating the tour's presence in their backyard, not a person was in sight.

All the homes have verandas and/or patios to accommodate festive gatherings, yet virtually no one saw fit to even peer out a window as the tournament unfolded toward Larry Nelson's eventual victory.

Hole after hole went by without so much as a sound that could be traced to one of these expensive homes or their elite owners. It's as if the golf tournament was an imposition, one that drove all these rich-but-stodgy home owners out of town for the weekend.

This behavior, however abnormal, may be idiosyncratic to Las Vegas. After all, just a few years ago the home owners at Spanish Trail voted to boot the PGA Tour off their course rather than sacrifice it to the pros for one week a year.

In other cities, homes that abut sporting locales are routinely packed to the rafters with enthusiasts on days when history is being made a stone's throw away. Look over the walls of Wrigley Field in Chicago when the Cubs are playing and the rooftops of the surrounding buildings are packed with fans, or, as a colleague points out, how the high rise condominium owners along the Long Beach Grand Prix go bananas on race day.

Perhaps reflecting Las Vegas' general detachment from all types of live sporting events, the home owners along the TPC at Summerlin didn't give a whit about the golf tournament. Aside from an occasional barking dog and the very rare sound of a child in a swimming pool, it's as if the homes were completely deserted -- or that they weren't homes at all but mere facades, propped up by plywood as if on a Hollywood studio lot.

Adding to the curiosity: These people paid extra -- considerably extra -- for their home sites and yet abandoned the area on the exact weekend when many would say owning such a home was a real dividend.

They missed a good tournament and a fun time that isn't really captured on the infomercial that serves as the ESPN telecast of the event.

"Maybe they're all out working, even if it is Easter," a tournament official said of those who were conspicuous by their absence. "You know with the price tag on these houses, maybe you have to work seven days a week."

We laughed and we hoped he was right.