Motivated by More Than Fame

If you’re Amy Alcott and can dream, here’s one for you.

Get named to the LPGA Hall of Fame and then, in your own backyard, go out and win your first tournament since 1991.

How fitting a victory would be for Alcott, who likes to say her career has been “a little girl’s dream that came true.”

Skeptics will say that anyone who thinks Alcott can win this weekend is dreaming.

She’ll be facing the LPGA’s best over the next three days at Oakmont Country Club in Glendale in the 54-hole, $650,000 Valley of the Stars Championship.

Alcott won only $59,420 last year and, besides tying for seventh at the Jamie Farr Kroger Classic, didn’t finish higher than 25th in 15 other tournaments.

It might not happen this weekend, but Alcott says she isn’t finished winning.

“I want to win again, I still have the drive to win,” she said. “I won in my teens, in my 20s and in my 30s. Now I want to win in my 40s.”

She said the sense of relief she feels now that she has finally made it into the Hall of Fame, long considered the toughest one in any sport to get in, should help.

Under new criteria, Alcott and Beth Daniel became the 15th and 16th members of the LPGA Hall of Fame this week. Alcott, with 29 tour victories, had been one win away from qualifying since winning the 1991 Dinah Shore. Under the new criteria, she easily qualified.

Alcott, who turns 43 Feb. 22, will be inducted March 22. Daniel, who also is playing in Glendale this weekend, has decided to put off her induction until 2000 to give her more time to make preparations that include a blow-out party in her hometown of Charleston, S.C.

Alcott, who lives in Santa Monica, plans to do some partying too. “I already started a list of people I would like to invite,” she said.

Alcott, a graduate of Pacific Palisades High who won the U.S. Golf Assn.’s Junior Girls title at 17, joined the tour at 19 in 1975 and won her third tournament. She won four tournaments in 1979, and repeated that feat in 1980 and ’84. She has won the Dinah Shore three times, the last one by eight strokes.

Alcott calls her last victory, the one at the ’91 Dinah Shore, her biggest thrill.

“I won it six months after my mother passed away,” she said, “and I can tell you she was with me every step of the way for all four days. She’s the one who used to drive me around to so many junior tournaments. My dad also encouraged me and used to enter me in tournaments against boys.”

After winning the Dinah Shore for the first time in 1988, she started a tradition by running into the lake that surrounds the 18th green. After the win in ‘91, she took her caddie and the tournament host with her.

LPGA Notes

Dale Eggeling, who won at Oakmont last year on the first hole of a playoff with Hiromi Kobayashi, is back to defend her title. Others in the field include Emilee Klein, who is from Studio City and grew up playing Oakmont, LPGA player of the year Annika Sorenstam and rookie of the year Se Ri Pak. . . . Play is scheduled to begin at 7 a.m. all three days. . . . Daily tickets cost $15. Details: (818) 957-4171.

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Valley of the Stars Championship

* When: Today-Sunday.

* Where: Oakmont Country Club (6,276 yards, par 72), Glendale.

* Purse: $650,000 (winner’s share: $97,500).

* TV: The Golf Channel (today, Saturday, Sunday, 1:30-4 p.m.).

* Defending champion: Dale Eggeling.