Unmistakably Dinah’s Place : Despite Founder Shore’s Passing, the 22nd Tournament This Week Will Be More Than Ever Hers, Although It Won’t Be The Same Without Beloved Entertainer

In the finest tradition of the stage, the show will go on, but Dinah Shore’s golf tournament won’t be the same without Dinah.

The Nabisco Dinah Shore--a women’s LPGA major event known simply as “Dinah’s tournament” since its beginning in 1972--will be played for the 22nd time this week at the Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage. It will be a week spent with memories of the golden-haired entertainer--who died of cancer Feb. 24 at her home in Beverly Hills--on everyone’s mind. She was 76.

Never again will the desert stillness be

broken by Shore singing, “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning,” as she walked to the first tee in her celebrity pro-am.

Never again will her old friend, Amy Alcott, smile as she hears, “Once in Love With Amy” before teeing off. Alcott, the only three-time winner of the tournament, will be forever linked with Shore in golfing lore for their jump into the lake at the 18th green after Alcott’s victory in 1991.

“There won’t be a lot of dry eyes around here by Sunday,” said Chipper Cecil, head pro at Mission Hills. “But we’re going ahead with plans with the attitude that Dinah is still here.”

Alcott probably spoke for everyone who knew Shore when she said, “I thought she’d be around forever.”

Somewhere on the rolling fairways of Mission Hills’ luxurious layout, the LPGA should erect a plaque that reads something like: “The LPGA wasn’t born here, but this, thanks to Dinah Shore, is where it grew up.”

Babe Didriksen Zaharias, Patty Berg, Louise Suggs and a few other women started the LPGA in 1950, but it wasn’t until Shore and David Foster, then president of the Colgate-Palmolive Co., got together to sponsor their first tournament that women’s golf emerged from the wilderness.

When Colgate dropped the tournament in 1982, Nabisco became its sponsor.

Before the first of Shore’s tournaments, purses for LPGA events were mostly in the $15,000-$30,000 range. The largest payout in 1971 was $50,000. When Foster, using Shore’s name and Colgate’s money, offered $110,000 for a 54-hole event in 1972, it opened the floodgates for other sponsors.

In five years, Shore’s tournament was up to $240,000 and this year’s event will pay $700,000.

“That was the turning point in women’s golf, not just for the money, but for the exposure,” said Jane Blalock, who won the first tournament and earned $20,050--more than the total purse for each of six other LPGA tournaments that year.

“The tour was still Podunk when we went to Palm Springs for the first time, and suddenly we were celebrities. We appeared with Dinah on her show, we were in commercials, we mingled and played with famous people and it made us feel like we were something.

“It changed the perception of women’s golf. The purse was four times what we had been getting on the average. To put things in perspective, it would be like playing for $5 million today.”

Shore was made an honorary member of the LPGA and received its Patty Berg Award for her “contribution to women’s golf.”

Sweden’s Helen Alfredsson, who is the defending champion this week, knew Shore for only two years, but said, “I learned so much from her in a short time. She was as genuine a person as anyone I ever met. It

is going to be rather sad going back to defend when Dinah won’t be there.”

*

The tournament itself was only part of the package Shore and Foster produced. First, there was a two-day celebrity pro-am in which Shore called on friends in the entertainment and sports fields to play with Colgate-Palmolive executives and clients. It was not the normal pro-am, where amateurs could pay their way in to play with the professionals. Shore’s pro-am was by invitation only.

This year’s pro-am--Tuesday and Wednesday at Mission Hills--will have some celebrities who have played in nearly all 21 tournaments. Among them are Robert Wagner, Dennis James, Hal Linden, Donald O’Connor, Wayne Rogers, Charles Schultz, Robert Stack, McLean Stevenson, Kathleen Sullivan, Johnny Bench, Joe DiMaggio, Joe Garagiola and former President Gerald Ford.

“Everything will be pretty much as it has been--except that Dinah won’t be there,” said Terry Wilcox, former director of golf at Mission Hills and now tournament director. “It’s going to be tough. We’ll all be expecting to look up and see her strolling down the fairway, cheering on the girls, when the tournament starts.”

Another tradition, “An Evening With Dinah,” at which she and friends entertained tournament guests, will go on as scheduled Tuesday night at the Westin Mission Hills Resort. It will probably be an evening-long tribute, with the LPGA, Nabisco, Mission Hills, the Palm Springs community and Shore’s many friends all joining in.

“I remember (“An Evening With Dinah”) in the first few years, we girls would be sitting there, surrounded by all those celebrities and big shots and we’d pinch ourselves to see if it was really happening,” Blalock said. “There we were, linked with Dinah--she was America’s sweetheart then--and she was like a cheerleader for us.

“As far as I’m concerned, she is the tournament, the spirit of the entire event.”

*

For those who were there March 31, 1991, or watching on national TV, one of the most endearing memories of Shore is of her jumping into the lake on the 18th hole at Mission Hills with Alcott and her caddie.

It was something she had talked about, but no one--especially Alcott--expected her to go through with it.

“We were hitting balls on the range one day at Hillcrest--we were both members there--when she mentioned jumping in the lake for the first time,” Alcott said. “She said the greatest publicity women’s golf ever had was when I jumped in with my caddie (Bill Kurre) on national TV after I won in 1988.

“She said she wanted me to win one more so she could go in the water with me. I thought she was joking, but she said her next tournament should be the one. My mother had just passed away, and Dinah said I should win it for her, and being it was the 20th anniversary of her tournament, she wanted to do something to remember it by.

“I led every day, from start to finish, and the closer I got to Sunday, the more she reminded me of our jump in the lake. I still never thought she’d do it. The water was really cold and dirty and I remembered from the last time what a mess I’d been when I got out. And it was dangerous, the bottom was slippery and squishy, and the lady was already in her 70s.

“When I walked to the 18th green, I was about eight shots in front, unheard of in a major. I was in what I call my ‘ultra zone.’ It was a very spiritual moment, remembering my mother and remembering what Dinah said about making her 20th something special.

“Even when I got to my ball, I didn’t think she’d do it, but in the background I saw her. She had on black slacks. I knew then she was serious. On the final day, she always wore white slacks and her red Nabisco blazer. I said to my caddie, ‘We’ve got to talk her out of it.’

“I made my birdie putt for a tournament record and when I looked up, here she came. She said, ‘I’ve got my bathrobe and I’m ready,’ and she took my hand and in we went. I’ll never forget her standing on the green, after we were helped out, with her hair all wet, that big smile on her face.”

*

In 1971, when Foster decided to sponsor a tournament financed by his Colgate-Palmolive Co., he talked to Shore about being the celebrity hostess.

“I was in Florida to do a little singing and visiting with some of the company executives when Mr. Foster invited me for a round of golf,” Shore recalled a few years ago. “We started betting, about 25 and 50 cents a hole, and the word got around how much fun we were having, so on the third day we had a little gallery of wives and friends.

“Mr. Foster noticed how interested they seemed to be and along about the 15th hole, he asked, ‘How would you like to put on a tournament?’ I said fine, if it was tennis, which I knew something about.

“He said he meant golf, that he wanted to do something to help the LPGA girls and he thought it would fit in with the Colgate image. I was doing ‘Dinah’s Place’ then and Colgate was one of my sponsors.

“Well, once he convinced me it was going to be golf, I had to get home and start working on my game--which was almost nonexistent at the time.”

Shore enlisted the help of Eric Monti, then head pro at Hillcrest. Rules against single women joining a country club cut down her playing opportunities, but she spent a lot of time on the range with Monti.

“She really worked hard to develop her swing,” Monti said. “Don’t forget, she was in her 50s when she started taking golf seriously, and it’s not easy to pick up the game that late. She was athletically inclined, and had good rhythm, so that helped.

“I remember her saying, before her first tournament, ‘Just get me to where I look good swinging at the ball.’ She was more interested in her image than her score. And she did look good.”

Monti was the Hillcrest pro in 1974 when a story in The Times revealed that Shore was barred from membership because she was a single female.

“I remember all the talk at the time, but the committee broke all the rules and bylaws so she could become a member,” he said.

Once Shore was able to get her own starting times at Hillcrest and Mission Hills, she became a golf junkie.

Monti was her tutor when she was in Beverly Hills and Wilcox was her mentor when she was in the desert.

“Dinah really loved the game,” Wilcox said. “She would play four or five days a week and if she had the time, she would work on her game every day.”

The Dinah Shore course, third among the Mission Hills complex, opened in 1988, and is one of the most difficult in the Palm Springs area.

*

What you saw of Shore on TV--the enthusiasm and outgoing personality--was what you got in person. She never met a person she didn’t like, and never encountered a situation in which she couldn’t find something good.

One of the most maddening things in golf is to see a putt lip out, watching it glide tantalizingly around the cup and not drop. When it happened to Shore, or one of her partners, she would break out in song: “Around the World. . . . “

Only Dinah Shore could be upbeat at a moment like that.