RANCHO MIRAGE, CALIFORNIA | She still waves, only this time it’s a goodbye. For 22 years, Dinah Shore, immortalized in bronze, has greeted players crossing the bridge to the island 18th green at the tournament course at Mission Hills that bears her name. The statue was created by her ex-husband, the actor and artist George Montgomery, who died in 2000 – nine months after his Dinah statue was unveiled, and the same year that her name was dropped from the tournament she founded in 1972 with David Foster, the president of Colgate-Palmolive.
Montgomery originally put their children in there as well, young kids trailing Dinah as she stepped forward and waved, a huge smile on her face. Today, Shore’s oldest, Missy Montgomery, is 74 and still visits the course during the tournament that hasn’t borne her mother’s name since the year the statue was unveiled.
George and Dinah built their home in the old Movie Colony neighborhood of Palm Springs in 1952. Friends such as Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin visited often. Even after the couple divorced in 1962, they remained the center of the social hierarchy in the desert, avid tennis players and members of The Racquet Club. So, when Foster, who had a financial interest in the new club way out in Rancho Mirage called Mission Hills, met with Dinah about hosting a tennis tournament at the club, the two talked themselves into an early spring LPGA Tour event, one that would become the first major championship of the golf season.
“I bet a good number of the young players don’t even know who she is,” said Laura Baugh, a former LPGA rookie of the year who lived in Palm Springs early in her career and counted Shore as a good friend. “When you look back at where our tour was in 1972, Dinah took us to another level. She was years ahead of her time.”
That first event 50 years ago was only 54 holes and was won by Jane Blalock, the 1969 rookie of the year who wore pigtails and sounded like a veteran TV anchor when a camera was put in her face. It couldn’t have been a better start.
In the years that followed, winners such as Mickey Wright, Judy Rankin, Kathy Whitworth, and Nancy Lopez kept the momentum going. Rankin recalled the old days before Rancho Mirage became a city on par with Palm Springs and Palm Desert. “The wind would come in and almost blow you down because there were no buildings or trees, nothing to stop it,” Rankin said a few years ago during tournament week.
Amy Alcott, who won the event that was by then known as “The Dinah” three times, got so excited after her second win in 1988 that she jumped into the pond between the green and the grandstands. Just like that, one of the most recognized traditions in women’s golf was born.
“I didn’t have any clue what I was starting,” Alcott said. “It was just a moment where I embraced my happiness.”
Throughout it all, Shore was the glue that kept the event relevant and major. A recording artist with a string of hits in the 1940s and ’50s, Francis Rose Shore (“Fanny” to her friends and “Dinah” to the public) was the female Bing Crosby of her day, a versatile performer who could sing, dance, act and charm an audience with her infectious smile and exaggerated air kisses. Few can name a single song from that period, even though her hit, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” which she recorded with Buddy Clark in 1949, is played hundreds of times every Christmas.
Not only did she bring a string of celebrity friends to her event, including Bob Hope and Burt Reynolds, Shore put the LPGA Tour stars on her variety shows – long before Instagram and the idea that professional golfers could market their own brand. Sometimes she had them hit balls, but they often were cooking with her in a studio kitchen or singing with her at a piano.
Shore became a star because of her voice and her magnetic personality, starting at the Grand Ole Opry in her native Tennessee before she headed to New York and then California. When her songs fell out of vogue, she hosted a music variety show sponsored by Chevrolet. Then she entered the talk-show arena, holding her own against heavyweights such as Merv Griffin and Mike Douglas.
At the time, thanks to Shore’s commitment to working women, The Dinah had a purse three times higher than anything else on the LPGA Tour. “Colgate did not initially get involved because they suddenly discovered the LPGA,” said Baugh, who had her own toothpaste deal in the 1970s as “the Ultra Brite Girl.” “They did it because of Dinah.
“She would go out of her way to make us feel welcome in the most genuine ways you can imagine. She would cook spaghetti for everyone, and she would get Bob and Dolores Hope involved. They had a big house on the hill, and everyone would go over for parties. Dinah did it all.”
Shore died in 1994. The Colgate-Dinah Shore became the Nabisco Dinah Shore. Then, in 2000, Shore’s name was dropped, and the tournament became the Nabisco Championship, then the Kraft Nabisco. That contract expired after 2014, and Japanese airline ANA entered the picture as title sponsor.
This week, The Dinah officially becomes the Chevron Championship and will be played in Rancho Mirage for the final time. Next year, this major moves to Houston, and will start a week earlier on the calendar.
How many of the traditions that have been built during the past 51 years will survive the move is an open question. But in a classy move, Chevron has gone out of its way to give Dinah Shore the credit she deserves.
A partnership to further champion women in sports 🏆
Today @LPGA and IMG announced that @Chevron has joined the LPGA family as the title sponsor of The Chevron Championship in 2022. pic.twitter.com/kk88eIzAsr
— The Chevron Championship (@Chevron_Golf) October 5, 2021
“Today’s players need to learn about her,” Hall of Famer Betsy King, a three-time winner here, said of Shore. “What she did for the tour is really important. It’s a story everybody should know.”