Briggs: How a $19,000 loss became Toledo's incredible golf gain

It might not be one of the most famous gambles in golf history, like, say Jean van de Velde unsheathing his driver at Carnoustie or Phil Mickelson and Roy McAvoy going for it on No. 18 at the U.S. Open.

But it was one of the biggest.

And let the record show: This one paid off.

Call it the loss that became northwest Ohio’s unimaginable gain.

As we prepare to celebrate the 40th birthday of the Dana LPGA Open — the civic sporting treasure that continues to bring the best women’s golfers on the planet to our backyard — it is worth remembering the bet that made the party possible.

Flash back to that very first year at Glengarry Country Club, now Stone Oak.

It was 1984, and an enterprising young caddie on the PGA Tour named Judd Silverman and M*A*S*H star Jamie Farr had successfully teamed to bring an LPGA tournament to their hometown.

The event was a hit.

Farr and his show-biz buddies — including Frankie Avalon — played in a star-splashed celebrity pro-am. Lauri Petersen held off a thrilling late charge from Nancy Lopez to capture the first Jamie Farr Toledo Classic and the $26,250 winner’s prize. And an estimated 37,000 fans enjoyed the week of action, including the 14,000 who filled the galleries for Sunday’s final round. (At the time, LPGA events averaged a total attendance of 20,000.)

Blade sports columnist Tom Loomis declared the tournament “an inspired idea from the fertile mind of Judd Silverman, who also carried it off expertly.”

There was just one problem.

The event … lost $19,000.

And the dream could have ended right there, but for that prescient gamble.

You see, when Silverman set off to start the tournament, he faced two big conditions. Before the LPGA would sign a contract, he needed to raise $250,000 and — because most events spent their first couple years in the red — find an underwriter to cover the potential losses.

The latter leap of faith was the biggest, taken by Don Michel, a childhood friend of Farr who owned several area McDonald’s restaurants and had co-founded the Ronald McDonald House in northwest Ohio. He convinced his fellow local franchisees to underwrite the tournament if it made the Ronald McDonald House — which provides homelike, temporary accommodations for families of hospitalized children — the sole beneficiary.

“They all agreed to take the gamble,” remembered Michel’s widow, Venice. “When Jamie got involved, we thought it would be very successful, to be honest. We felt it would help Toledo. You have to take chances in life.”

And keep taking them.

After that first year, a businessman with a lesser vision than Michel might have written that $19,000 check, then cut his losses.

“That would have been the difference between having the tournament and not having the tournament,” Silverman said.

But Michel and the McDonald’s co-op knew a good thing when they saw it.

“The tournament was so well received by the community and Jamie,” Silverman said, “that they were willing to give us another chance.”

It proved the wager of a lifetime.

Silverman went back to work, the tournament came out $55,000 ahead the next year, and the rest is golf history.

Today, the Dana Open endures as a beautiful tribute to what is possible when a community rallies together.

It is now the second-longest running tournament on the LPGA Tour — behind only the 52-year-old Portland Classic — and has raised almost $14 million for 215 area children’s charities, including well over $2 million for the Ronald McDonald House.

All we can say is thank you to everyone who has made it possible — to Silverman and Farr, to the untold business leaders, volunteers, and fans, and to the men with the golden arches who envisioned the golden days ahead.

“I know he was and would be very proud,” Venice Michel said of Don, who died in 2017 at 82. “It's overwhelming how much money has been raised. It's far exceeded anything we could have imagined.”

A bet on which Toledo just keeps cashing in.