Alcott Will Test the Water of Retirement

When she won the Nabisco Dinah Shore tournament in 1988, nobody told Amy Alcott to go jump in a lake, but she did anyway. Since that first splash, the leap into the pond at the 18th green at Mission Hills Country Club has become an annual tradition for tournament champions. Alcott was only the first to get her feet wet, not to mention all the rest of her.

Now, Alcott is about to take another plunge, this time into something that resembles retirement, although she doesn’t call it that. Three weeks from now, Alcott is going to play the Kraft Nabisco Championship at Mission Hills for the 32nd consecutive time.

She insists it won’t be her last. Not long ago, she played Bel-Air Country Club and shot a 65 from the men’s tees, which told her something.

“I still have some snap,” she said.

Alcott played only three tournaments last year and only 10 the two years before that. Her tournament schedule this year might include as many as seven tournaments, and she’s hoping to do more than simply make a cut, something she has done only twice in the last three years.

The last time Alcott won an LPGA event was 1991 when she claimed her third Kraft Nabisco Championship and her 29th pro title. That was enough for Alcott to join the Hall of Fame, which she did in 1999.

Last month, Alcott turned 50 and her memories of making a dent as a pro seem so long ago.

As a 19-year-old rookie in 1975, she won the third tournament she played, the Orange Blossom Classic in St. Petersburg, Fla., a victory that earned her a spot in the Colgate-Dinah Shore Winners Circle.

That’s when Alcott met Dinah Shore for the first time. Although Shore was 40 years older, the teen pro quickly formed a bond with her. Alcott said Shore believed in the future of women’s golf and that personalities and appearance were important.

“She said women had to be great at what they do, that they had to roll over and bite themselves to get any attention.”

And so Alcott jumped into the lake. Years later, Annika Sorenstam asked Alcott about taking the leap. Alcott said she was just being herself. Then Sorenstam thought it was cool, according to Alcott, who remembers ending the conversation in her typically breezy style.

“Besides, why not?”

That’s sort of the same attitude Alcott had when she began her career. When she was 9, her first golf course was the front yard of her home on Avondale Avenue in Brentwood.

She practiced her putting by using soup cans as targets. When it was dark, she cut out the bottom of the can and inserted a flashlight. Neither parent played golf although they both had a sports background. Eugene was an orthodontist who played the violin and loved Mantovani, but grew up playing handball. Lea was a homemaker with a taste for Modigliani prints, but she played tennis.

Alcott and her father had the front lawn cut short to make it more like a putting green and they built a bunker that was filled with sand bought from a lumberyard. When she started getting better at practice, Alcott hit balls from her yard into a neighbor’s yard, then knocked them back home.

The ball was rolling so well, young Amy decided to take it a step further. She began to refer to her home as the Alcott Golf and Country Club. Friends who came over signed membership forms she had drawn up and were given membership cards. As club president, Alcott made brochures and expanded the club into the backyard, where a driving net was erected.

It wasn’t long before Alcott was working with legendary teaching pro Walter Keller, who had an indoor driving net at his place in Westwood. That’s where she learned to play.

Alcott became known as the “home grown pro” and played in Southern California Junior Amateur events with such future pros as Corey Pavin and Laura Baugh. In 1973 at 17, she won the U.S. Girls Junior Amateur.

The rest is a matter for the record books: five major championships, including the 1980 U.S. Open; rookie of the year in 1975; the Vare Trophy for lowest scoring average in 1980; selected one of the LPGA’s top 50 players during the LPGA’s 50th anniversary celebration in 2000; and the 2005 Henry P. Iba Award for outstanding female citizen athlete.

Even if she isn’t playing much, retirement, or whatever she calls it, has kept Alcott as busy as ever, as a golf course design consultant working on her second course, a remodel of Brick Landing in Ocean Isle, N.C. Her first project, with architect Casey O’Callaghan, was Indian Canyons Golf Club in Palm Springs.

Then there’s her work as a consultant for a golf real estate company, the second season of her GolfChix radio show on Sirius and her book project, titled “Golf Lessons, Life Lesson.”

Alcott said she has a lot of material. She said she has heard parents say the wrong things about their young golf prodigies: “ ‘My kid’s an annuity policy for me.’ It makes my skin crawl.”

That’s not the way Alcott said she felt as a girl in the front yard of that house on Avondale Avenue, thanks to parents who never emphasized sports and winning.

“I’m just glad I could be my own person,” Alcott said.