Insider Reflections on the Tony Lema Tournament

The ink was still drying on last week’s Coastal Breeze News when we received an email from Jim Stackpoole, the tournament director of the Tony Lema Memorial Tournament, the celebrity-pro golf tournament that enjoyed a star-studded 14-year run on Marco Island from 1967 to 1980.

The tournament was started to honor the memory of Tony Lema, the charismatic golfer who died tragically in a plane crash on July 24, 1966, following the PGA Tournament at Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio. Lema was the Marco Island Country Club’s touring golf pro for exactly one year after being hired July 24, 1965. 

In a gesture that typifies his leadership style, Stackpoole was writing on behalf of one of his team members, who he said deserves recognition for her part in making the Tony Lema Tournament the resounding success it was.

“Barb Klimas was an extremely important person in the organization and execution of the event,” said Stackpoole, now 79 and a retired real estate developer in the Tampa area. “Barb handled all celebrity communications and hotel reservations as well as travel arrangements for celebrity participants and also managed the starting times for each participant among other key organizational functions.”

It’s characteristic for Stackpoole to make sure others get credit and recognition. That quality undoubtedly served him well as he quickly rose through the ranks at the Deltona Corporation, the developers of modern Marco Island. Deltona had a leader in President Frank Mackle, Jr., who practiced the same type of leadership that Stackpoole does.

Stackpoole was just a kid when he was recruited to Deltona by Marco Beach Hotel (now the JW Marriott) manager Roger Everingham, a young man of 30 himself. Stackpoole, a Michigan State grad, was just getting out of the Navy as a lieutenant junior grade after attending Officer’s Candidate School. He managed the Old Marco Inn his first year on the island, where he deferred credit to his chef. 

"I was just lucky to have him,” Stackpoole said, "because the food was outstanding. He was a nice guy, easy to work with. It made my life very easy. We were very busy. We had a great clientele. Among the clientele became Roger and Barb Everingham, Robert Mackle and his wife, and Virginia and Frank Mackle would come from time to time. So, I made their acquaintance. 

Soon Stackpoole was offered a job with Deltona.

"Roger suggested that I manage the Country Club,” Stackpoole said, "because it was going to have this large food and beverage operation. I had become very good friends with Bill Tamplin, the publisher and founder of the Marco Island Eagle. Bill would hang out at the Old Marco Inn and became a good friend. He told me, 'Jim, you'd be crazy not to join Deltona. They're a wonderful company with wonderful leaders. You'll have a good future with them.' So, I took Roger up on his offer. I'm very happy that I did. We had a good relationship and of course, it turned out great for me. It turned into a 20-year job and education."

When Stackpoole started with Deltona, he was just 25 years old. "I was just a kid in the organization back then,” he said.

Modern Marco Island was in its infancy at that time, too. The Marco River Bridge (now the Judge Jolley Bridge) was built just before Stackpoole's first trip to Marco Island in 1969. The Marco Beach Hotel and the Marco Island Country Club were under construction, and the Yacht Club was complete but solely operating as the island's Catholic Church (more on that later!).

Young Stackpoole had an outstanding mentor in Frank Mackle, Jr., Deltona’s president. He held Mackle in the highest esteem. It seems the feelings were mutual, although Stackpoole feels Mackle and the club’s world-famous golf professional, Gene Sarazen, weren’t sure Stackpoole was quite ready to handle the expectations they were placing on him. Stackpoole recalls one of his first interactions with Sarazen, who was in the men’s locker room at the brand-new Marco Island Country Club.

“When I first took the job at Marco, I was young and brand new,” Stackpoole said, "and all of a sudden, I'm at the Country Club, and I met Gene Sarazen, who I was in awe of, in the beautiful new locker room. There'd be a group of people that would sit back there. A lot of the guys would come early in the morning for coffee because it was free. We'd put it out and they'd show up at seven. We put on local financial news, and they'd sit there and try to solve the problems of the world. I'd only been at the club for maybe a couple of weeks. Gene Sarazen was sitting with them. I just talked to the group for a few minutes and then turned around and headed to the office. I overheard Gene saying to the group, 'He seems like a nice kid. I hope he makes it.’ Thank God, I did make it for 20 great years there."

Stackpoole figures Mackle was showing faith in Everingham's decision to give him a chance to manage the brand new country club even though he was five years Everingham’s junior.

"Mr. Mackle would come on the weekends,” Stackpoole said. "I think he was skeptical about putting someone that young in the job because the Country Club meant a great deal to him. He loved golf. He considered the Country Club a showplace for Marco Island. The Tony Lema tournament was very important to him. And I think if it hadn't been for Roger being quite new at the time, and him not wanting to overturn Roger on a management decision, I think I might have had trouble getting the job. I think probably his initial reaction was that I'm too young and inexperienced to be in that position.”

Stackpoole took the Tony Lema Tournament to the highest of highs. It was arguably the biggest event in Collier County. The Lema guest lists were a Who’s Who of the sports and entertainment worlds. And Stackpoole was the architect. Mickey Mantle, Perry Como, Jackie Gleason, Glen Campbell, Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, Roger Maris, Lee Trevino, Johnny Unitas, Dick Butkus, Bob Griese, the Super Bowl champion Miami Dolphins, Evel Knievel…were just a sampling of the star power at the Lema tournaments.

“Fortunately,” Stackpoole said, "I was able, over time, to prove him wrong. And the successful running of the Tony Lema Tournament was really the thing that became most important. Getting through that and having it work well and having him proud of what happened. That kind of settled everything down and made me feel at home and I think made him feel at home with me." 

The Tony Lema Tournament was a year-round effort at the Country Club, which had opened about the time Stackpoole arrived. 

"You kind of worked at it all year,” Stackpoole said, “it was always on your mind. We always had a network of, basically, celebrities. Ken Venturi and Bob Griese were a big help in bringing people to the Lema.”

Venturi, a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame like Sarazen, was quite famous in the golf world, first as a touring professional, then as possibly the greatest golf announcer ever. Griese was in the midst of a three-year run of Super Bowl appearances with the Miami Dolphins—including the Perfect Season in 1972.

"We would tell them to keep their eyes open and feel free to invite somebody that they thought was high quality and, you know, a well-known celebrity,” Stackpoole said. "When Ken Venturi came to Marco, he kind of took us to the next level with celebrities because he was from California and he knew people like Peter Falk, for example. And Griese would get Terry Bradshaw and a lot of the really top football players to come. From that sense, you kind of worked on it all the time. But the real tournament itself got cranking in January. It was a March tournament. We'd get pro commitments from a gentleman that worked for the PGA who I'd hire to line up the pros for us."

The original country club, prior to Stackpoole’s arrival, was basically a beautiful golf course with spartan facilities.

"The original country club was a small facility,” Stackpoole said. "Built in 1966. They opened a pro shop and a very small luncheon room with a small locker room. No major dining at all.”

The new country club was another story altogether. Deltona architect Herb Savage designed the Marco Island Country Club, Marco Island Yacht Club and Marco Beach Hotel. Savage was an iconic figure on Marco Island, living to just short of his 100th birthday.

“One of Herb Savage's chores was to design and build a new country club and the Marco Beach Hotel,” Stackpoole said. “The Country Club got finished first. The Marco Beach Hotel got finished right behind it."

The early years of the Yacht Club, located at the foot of the Marco River Bridge, was most interesting.

"It was basically closed,” Stackpoole said. “It was a new building and it had not been opened. They wanted to open the Yacht Club. It was not being operated as a yacht club and they were holding Sunday mass there. There was a sunken bar that was used as the altar for the mass, the priesthood. I'd been going to that yacht club for almost a year with my family, but it was the Catholic Church as opposed to being a functioning yacht club. Fortunately, the Catholic Church was being built and they were moving into their regular church and the Yacht Club was going to be opened and run as a yacht club, which was part of my job also. That worked out well.”

Stackpoole said the new Marco Island Country Club was magnificent. 

“It was beautiful,” he said. “It was just being completed. It was this Polynesian building with just a great locker room, a great 19th hole, a beautiful pro shop. And then you went into this separate wing and it had a 250-seat dining room that sat on two levels overlooking the golf course. And a lounge that had probably a hundred seats in it and a big, round bar where every window was looking out onto the golf course. I mean, it was fabulous."

It would be hard to overstate the effect working alongside Gene Sarazen had on Stackpoole.

"And then there is Gene Sarazen,” Stackpoole said. "In college, I bought a set of golf clubs that were Wilson Staff because they were Gene Sarazen autograph clubs. So, I thought, ‘Gosh, this is destiny. Now I can bring my Gene Sarazen clubs right up to the club.’ I was in awe, to be honest. It was just such a beautiful facility.”

An agreement Stackpoole negotiated with the Collier County Public Schools illustrates the county-wide popularity of the Tony Lema Tournament in the 1970s. County officials noticed a lot of absences on the day of the tournament. And it wasn’t just the kids who were playing hooky.

“We would have teachers that would work the tournament,” Stackpoole said. "They would take sick days. And we had kids and teachers who would just skip school to come to it. When this all came to light, the school board threatened to not allow them to have sick days and to provide some kind of punishment if they skip class. I called the school superintendent and I told him, ‘You know,  it's none of my business, but this is a big event on Marco and it's a big event in the county. And a lot of money goes to charity from it. I think you're fighting against a headwind here that you're not going to win because people are going to want to come to this when you have 40 celebrities and this kind of an event going on. I told him it has to be held on a Monday because we have to follow the Doral Eastern Open in Miami. We can't have it on a Saturday or Sunday. And I said I'd just like you to consider not punishing people who do come to it. He made it a school holiday.”

But nothing lasts forever - even a seemingly utopian situation like the Camelot the Mackle Brothers were creating on Marco Island.

A key to the success of Deltona’s development of the island was the dredge and fill permits they were systematically filling as they sold future homesites on the island. When those permits were denied, coupled with rising interest rates, things suddenly went south for the Deltona Corporation. Of course, the success of the Tony Lema Tournament was intrinsically linked to Deltona’s success.

“For the last number of years that I was there I reported directly to Frank Mackle, Jr.,” Stackpoole said. “Once they lost their dredge permits and got into a number of financial issues, he thought it was wise to set up a separate corporation to run the development of Marco Island. The primary reason for that was the permitting of the property. It was a strange process when they lost their dredge permit. They got into a lawsuit with the federal government and also with the state. Their permits didn't exist technically. So, this whole system ended up working backwards where they had to settle first with the federal government, with the Army Corps, then they had to settle with the state, and then they had to come back and at last get their permits from the county, which is totally backwards from the normal process. And by then, Naples had grown and the city and the county had changed a lot.”

Mackle installed Stackpoole as president of the separate corporation, named DelMarco.

“When we actually sold the hotel to Marriott, we negotiated one year of complimentary rooms to do the Lema one more year,” Stackpoole said. “But all of a sudden, those rooms that we gave to the pros and the celebrities and so on that were comped we all of a sudden had to pay cash for at the Marriott hotel. So, the Lema became very expensive and very unprofitable to run. We just were not in a position to continue, having lost the dredge permits and had to refund money. We were just not in a position to continue it. And that's the truth. It was all financial. Otherwise, it would have been continued. It would have been a huge cash outflow to pay Marriott their room rates for probably a total of 300 room nights. That was the end of it. And it was kind of a blow to me because it was so much fun. It was big to the island. It was big to the county and it was a wonderful event for a lot of reasons.”

Tom Rife was sports editor for the Naples Daily News for 31 years. He experienced Stackpoole’s hospitality as he annually covered the Tony Lema Tournament. Rife will never forget the first-class treatment he received from Stackpoole and Klimas. He’ll also never forget a phone call he received from Stackpoole informing him of the Lema Tournament’s demise in 1980.

"Frank Mackle, Jr. handpicked Stackpoole to be the director of the Tony Lema,” Tom Rife said. “That was his baby. And the night that Jim called me, I felt horrible because he was so distraught. He had been driving around and he finally got to a phone booth and called me. I said, ‘Hey Jim, what's up?’ I thought he was calling to tell me who's coming to the next tournament. He says, ‘No, I've got some news. I got some bad news. We're not doing the Lema anymore.’ He was just distraught and heartbroken.”

Rife, who covered sporting events as diverse as the Miami Dolphins, Florida Gators, Miami Hurricanes, Florida State Seminoles, to the local Swamp Buggy Championships, considered the Tony Lema Tournaments the highlight of his year.

"It was an unbelievable event,” Rife said. "He treated me like I was from the New York Times or something. I always went to the banquet the night before the tournament at the Marco Beach Hotel and it was a Who's Who of celebrities. One night I ate dinner at the same table with James Garner and Perry Como. It was unbelievable. Perry Como got up and sang the Barbra Streisand song, The Way We Were. You could have heard a pin drop in that ballroom. I tell people now who I talked to at the Lema Tournament, and they don't believe me. There was no lack of star power at the Tony Lema, whether it was golfers or just celebrities or professional athletes. I mean, it was just heaven on earth one day a year. And there was nobody better at it than Stackpoole. It was pulled off meticulously. No stone was left unturned in terms of hospitality, I can tell you that."

The end of the Lema Tournament was indeed heartbreaking for Stackpoole.

"I would say that, yeah,” Stackpoole reflects, "a piece of me went with it. I would say that for sure."