Like many of you, I spent part of Father’s Day weekend viewing the U.S. Open golf tournament at Pebble Beach on the TV, watching all the ups and downs of the world’s best golfers battling one of the world’s great golf courses.

It was a de ja vu moment for yours truly. As a sports writer back in 1972, I was privileged to cover the first U.S. Open ever played at Pebble. I even caught a brief glimpse of myself in some of the archival footage aired on Sunday.
I was able to walk inside the gallery ropes and watched Jack Nicklaus play 60 of the 72 holes. Nicklaus was on a mission: his 11th major tournament win, seeking to tie the legendary Walter Hagen. I’ve never seen or met anyone more fiercely focused. He was incredible.

Nicklaus held off the likes of Arnold Palmer, Bruce Campton, Lee Trevino, Homero Blancas and Tom Watson (who was playing in his first Open). Nicklaus overcame cold, wind and rough that seemed to be knee-deep to pull away and win by three strokes—at two over par!

It was as strong a competitive performance as I ever witnessed in my years as a reporter. Based on national and local giving trends, we will need that same kind of determination, hard work and dedication of excellence to get UWCCR through at least two more difficult years.

Giving USA Foundation reported about two weeks ago that charitable giving fell 3.6% in 2009, the second-worst one-year drop on record (the worst being 5.5% during the 1974 recession). Still, the total given is estimated at $303.75 billion, 33% if that to religion.

Nationally, individual giving dropped only 0.4%, to $227.41 billion. We, of course, saw a much different picture. State workers reacted to ongoing budget turmoil. They’ve had their incomes reduced by about 15%. They dropped their giving 10% in the 2009 CSECC campaign.

Private sector individual giving here was down 10.7%. Major corporations moved jobs out of our area. And city and county employees, caught up in their own budget turmoil, reacted like State employees (we include city and county campaigns in our “private sector” tally).

Corporate giving nationally was up 5.5% to $14.1 billion, but much of the increase was in-kind gifts, not cash. Locally, corporate contributions have never been a strong part of our campaign because we have so few headquarters here. Our 2009-10 corporate dollars were down 9.2%.

All that adds up to lots of challenges as we look to 2010-11 and beyond. It’s going to be rough. The economy is not going to be warming up much any time soon. And the winds of change are definitely blowing.