The ANA Inspiration conjures up countless memories and eternal traditions that have long stood the test of time. Champions plunging into Poppie’s Pond. Fans admiring the statue of Dinah Shore on the 18th hole. Drivers making left and right turns on the eponymous streets named after Frank Sinatra, Gerald Ford, and Dinah Shore.
Some things simply never change.
Yet, just as immersed as the event is in its history, the ANA Inspiration is equally greedy for change. For improvement. For integration. And for being open to new things, which is why the 2020 event continues to be on schedule despite a challenging pandemic.
“It’s awesome. Obviously with everything that has gone on this year, they could have just walked away and say, ‘Hey, we’ll see you in 2021.’ For them to step up and keep the event on schedule is really a dream come true,” said two-time ANA Inspiration champion Brittany Lincicome, author of some of the most memorable moments in championship history. “It’s obviously one of my favorite events after winning it twice, but just how pretty Palm Springs, California is and how well they treat us. It’s so amazing to see them still supporting us even in this pandemic and letting us play.
“They obviously understand that it’s a traditional event we’ve had on the Tour for a long time. They have literally come in and done everything possible to keep those traditions and keep it as it was but also elevate it to a whole other level. ANA has taken it to another level. It’s a special event and for them to step in and to keep it as high of an event as it used to be and now making it even better. We’re so grateful that ANA has come into the LPGA and that they support that event.”
Being inclusive is but one of the reasons why the LPGA continues to work with the Japanese airline which has been awarded the prestigious 5-Star reward by SKYTRAX for six consecutive years since 2013.
Another might be everyone’s commitment to improving the game of golf, in particular, women’s golf, a message that is especially fitting of the event which is held at the Dinah Shore Tournament Course at the Mission Hills Country Club. Proliferation of Women’s Golf was one of the late Dinah Shore’s core visions.
Dinah would be thrilled to see the event and the game adapting and growing. She was, if nothing else, an innovator.
Shore would be 104 this year. She passed away from pancreatic cancer in February of 1994 but not before seeing the event she founded with David Foster, the CEO of Colgate-Palmolive, become one of the most prestigious and recognized in the game. That shouldn’t surprise those who followed Dinah’s career. In the Depression era, when more people knew the names of “big band” directors than knew the singers who fronted them, Dinah was the first female singer to break out on her own. She had 80 hits from 1940 to 1957, including four No. 1 singles. Her first hit, “The Breeze and I,” reached No. 13 on the charts more than a year before the U.S. entered World War II.
She continued to record songs until 1974. But beginning in 1951, she started a second career, hosting a television show. For a dozen years, Dinah beamed into American living rooms with The Dinah Shore Show. Then, after a break, she returned to the small screen with Dinah’s Place and Dinah!, keeping her on the air from 1970 through 1980, winning nine Emmy Awards and one Peabody.
At the height of that run, she brought the best women golfers in the world to her home in Palm Springs.
Jane Blalock won the first Colgate Dinah Shore Winner’s Circle, now the ANA Inspiration. Blalock still attends the event, playing with the teenagers at the Junior ANA Inspiration and regaling them with the stories of the tournament’s generous founder.
There wouldn’t be a bathrobe awaiting the winner if not for Dinah. Yes, Amy Alcott was the first to take the plunge in what is now Poppie’s Pond in 1988, but the 1989 and 1990 winners failed to follow suit. It wasn’t until Alcott won again in 1991 and Dinah joined her on the jump that it became a ritual.
And the last thing to know, as television cameras pan to Dinah’s statue this week, is that she was the first non-LPGA member to be inducted into the LPGA Hall of Fame.
That is why the Dinah Shore Tournament Course bears her name, and why Mission Hills Country Club sits off Dinah Shore Drive in Rancho Mirage, Calif. While the course, the field, the past winners and the drama have made the ANA Inspiration an unforgettable event, Dinah Shore made it major. Twenty-six years after her death, her legacy of innovation is still on full display.