[
NBCC
GOLF
]
Club Champions
NEWKIRK AND SCHMIDT CONQUER THE TOP SPORT
AT NEWPORT BEACH COUNTRY CLUB
BY RANDY YOUNGMAN
A
golf coach who lost her job during the COVID-19 pandemic and a frequent World Long Drive Championship finalist
emerged as the women’s and men’s club champions at Newport Beach Country Club this summer.
AiLam Newkirk won her third consecutive (and fourth overall) NBCC women’s title, and George Schmidt improved
on his runner-up finish a year ago by winning the men’s club title in his second year as a member.
AiLam Newkirk
In retrospect, it seems fitting that AiLam and George used to
tee it up together in their regular Wednesday and Friday groups
at the club. They also were Jones Cup teammates in 2019, and
they will represent NBCC again in the 2020 Jones Cup this
month at Big Canyon Country Club.
An NBCC member for nearly 10 years, Newkirk had to come
from behind to complete her “three-peat” as club champ. She
previously won in 2016, 2018 and 2019.
After struggling to an 89 and falling six
shots off the pace on what she called “a
rough first day,” AiLam bounced back with
rounds of 77 and 80 to hold off runner-up
Debbie Fleming in the 54-hole event.
“We were tied coming into the third
day,” Newkirk recalled, “but I came back to
beat her.”
Highlight of the final round was
Newkirk holing out for eagle, from 119
yards out, on the par-5 15th hole. And what
made the shot even more dramatic is that
she didn’t see the ball go in.
“I pulled my second shot into the rough
near this big eucalyptus tree, so I had to go
around it,” she recalled. “The rough was
really thick and the pin was tucked, all the
way back, about two or three paces (from
Debbie Fleming Martin Lidington
the edge of the green).
“I decided to take a 9-iron and hit a nice draw shot around
the tree. But the rough was so thick, it turned my clubface (to
the left) and my ball hit a leaf on the eucalyptus tree, landed
all the way in the back (of the green) and just disappeared. I
thought maybe it ran off the back or something.”
So she walked toward the green, prepared to hit her fourth
shot. As she reached the green and walked up the slope onto
the upper tier, the ball was nowhere to be seen. “So I keep
looking for it, and looking for it, and I can’t find it,” she
recalled.
AiLam remembers four club employees sitting near the
green: head pro Robbie Maurer, General Manager Casey Kaut,
Assistant General Manager Clint Cook and course superintendent
Scot Dey.
“The four of them were sitting there, and I think the only
one who saw my shot was Robbie, and he was clapping,”
Newkirk said, laughing. “He said, ‘How come nobody (else) is
clapping? . . . . I think it’s in’ (the hole).”
So AiLam checked the cup . . .
“I looked down in the hole, and it was in there!”
The eagle had landed, and Newkirk was on her way to
another title.
It was the perfect way to start the summer after a depressing
spring that saw her 2020 season as Irvine Valley College golf
coach suddenly end in mid-March, when all spring sports in
the California Community College Athletic Association were
suspended and then canceled because of the coronavirus
pandemic.
And that wasn’t the worst news. During the ensuing shutdown,
Newkirk learned that IVC had decided to eliminate the
men’s and women’s golf programs she had been coaching the
past five years. Because of a budget crunch directly related to
the pandemic, IVC ultimately pulled the plug on both sports
to comply with Title IX regulations.
“Unfortunately, since the lockdown, they decided to shut
down both programs,” she said. “I had coached there for a total
of five years, as an assistant coach and then head coach for the
past 2 ½ years. . . .
“I also was on the faculty; I taught beginning, intermediate
34 BAY WINDOW