A Great Event Lives Up to Its Namesake

She was America’s First Lady for as long as anyone could remember. Hillary Clinton should only dream of being adored as much. She was America’s Sweetheart after Mary Pickford. She was also America’s Kid Sister.

She sold Chevrolets as fast as General Motors could make them. Her TV show was an institution. She could have been a success in films except that Doris Day had already done all the parts she would.

She came out of Tennessee and Vanderbilt University and was as American as hush puppies and key lime pie.

She sang like a thrush. She had big black eyes and golden blonde hair and a figure I once described as eagle, birdie, birdie. It was once said her smile could light New York. Everybody loved her and she loved everybody. She was the female Will Rogers. She never met a person she didn’t like. And vice versa. Even in a backbiting community like Hollywood, you could never find anyone to say an unkind word about her.

She was one of the world’s great listeners. She was interested in everything. Her dinner parties were legendary. She didn’t have a temperamental bone in her body. She never came late to anything in her life. She stayed young at heart. And everywhere else. When you had her for a friend, you didn’t need many more. She read more books than Arnold Toynbee. She should have been secretary of state.

It is one of the great paradoxes of history that she should address posterity not as one of the great entertainers of her time but as a towering sports figure. One of the great sports events of our day bears her name--the Dinah Shore LPGA Invitational.

It is probably the most cherished tournament in women’s golf, certainly the best publicized, which is due in most measure to Dinah Shore.

There are only three championships whose show-business names originated with the tournament. Bing Crosby invented the celebrity pro-am with his “clambake” in 1938, which he started so he could get in a few rounds with his favorite pros. Bing fancied himself as a pro-level golfer himself, which he almost was, having competed in the British Amateur, no less.

Bob Hope started his Desert Classic to fund hospital charities in the under-served medical facilities around Palm Springs.

Other tournaments latched on to celebrity names for brief periods. But they were existing tour events before they did so. The L.A. Open became the Glen Campbell, San Diego became the Andy Williams, Tucson became the Dean Martin and Hartford became the Sammy Davis Jr. Greater Hartford Open, but those were ploys to attract celebrity players in the pro-ams.

Only Dinah and Bob Hope have their name affixed today. The golf tour has been given over to corporate sponsorship--in fact, Dinah’s is the Nabisco Dinah Shore and Bob’s is the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic.

Dinah’s most closely resembles a tournament started by another American icon--Bobby Jones. Jones, of course, was not a show-business character but one of the great golfers of all time and his creation, the Masters, stands as much a monument to him as his four U.S. Open titles, three British Open championships and his Grand Slam--the British and U.S. Open and Amateur titles in 1930.

Dinah’s sport of choice was not even golf when her tournament was proposed. Tennis was her recreational preference when David Foster, chief officer of the Colgate-Palmolive company, for whom Dinah had appeared on TV, proposed to establish a women’s golf tourney in her name.

Dinah was intrigued, then, hooked.

“I took some golf lessons from Ellie Vines and Johnny Revolta and I thought, ‘Wow! How long has this been going on?’ ” she said.

From that day on, says Dinah, who had won nine Emmys, made nine gold records, got nine Gold Medal awards, a Golden Globe and a Peabody Award that attested, “What TV needs is about 100 Dinah Shores,” all she wanted in the world was to break 80.

Gallantry prevents us from discussing whether she ever got her wish, but there is no doubt her tournament broke women’s golf records for two decades. The prize money that had started at $110,000--$20, 000 to the winner--in 1972, is $700,000 this year, with $105,000 going to the winner.

All Colgate wanted to do was sell toothpaste--which it did. And when David Foster lost his position and the tournament in 1981, Nabisco and Ross Johnson were only too glad to jump into sponsorship. And raise the prize money.

Like the men’s Masters, the Dinah Shore is not open to anybody, only the elite of the game. Its winners’ list read like the “Who’s Who” of the game. Mickey Wright, who was to women’s golf what Jack Nicklaus was to men’s, won her last tournament, her 82nd, here.

Nancy Lopez won here. Donna Caponi. Pat Bradley, Kathy Whitworth. Amy Alcott won three times.

The Mission Hills course, the field, the qualifications make it a premiere event. But the lady whose name it bears gave it its special stamp. Railroad baron Henry Huntington used to say, “The best and surest way to immortality is the ownership of a fine library.”

Not for anyone who ever tried to squeeze a five-iron between two trees onto a guarded green with water on the left. The best and surest way to immortality is the “ownership” of a major golf tournament.

Which would you rather do? Read a Shakespeare folio correctly or a 10-foot putt? Dinah is as proud of her association with Dottie Mochrie, Juli Inkster, JoAnne Carner as she ever was with Eddie Cantor, Xavier Cugat or any of the crowned heads of Europe she sang for. Her tournament is the greatest on the women’s tour. You might say it’s all due to Dinah Might.