The LPGA won't admit it
but the lesbian bars and clubs in Palm Springs tell the real story.
Veronica Lee found that the thousands of women who turn up for the Dinah
Shore Classic aren't all there for the golf
Sunday 6 May 2001
The Observer
Television personality Dinah Shore, a keen golfer and sports fan (whose other claim to fame was a six-year affair with Burt Reynolds), started the tournament in 1972, putting her name and money into the then grossly underfunded LPGA, when female golfers earned a pittance in comparison to the men and were rarely covered on TV. Because Shore was a big Hollywood name, she was able to get friends in the business to give their support, and the event took off as her presence attracted all-important sponsors. She also attracted women, despite not being gay herself, although the lesbian nation likes to claim her as a sister.
Eleven years ago, Sandy Sachs and Robin Gans, owners of the Los Angeles lesbian club Girl Bar, came to the tournament, were bored rigid, and saw an opportunity. They started promoting hotel packages, music clubs and pool parties during the golf weekend, which initially attracted sports fans looking for something to do once the golf was through mid-afternoon, and women who just wanted to be around other women in a convivial atmosphere. Over the past few years, due largely to their efforts, the weekend has turned into a lesbian bacchanal where any self-respecting US dyke goes to get a tan, get a girlfriend and get laid. Oh, and maybe watch some golf.
The first time they went to Palm Springs, Sachs and Gans Ð partners in business and in life Ð actually watched some golf. 'That was so boring,' says Sachs, grimacing at the memory. 'We only went because we knew one of the players, who was then the girlfriend of one of my exes. It was exhausting, all that walking, walking, walking in the heat. We looked at each other and said, "Never again".' Instead they devoted themselves to providing more interesting but equally vigorous forms of entertainment and the partying now attracts more lesbians than the golf itself. In fact, the joke has it that some of their clients can spend the entire weekend in blissful ignorance that there is a golf tournament at all.
The LPGA, for its part, appears to be equally unaware. 'Oh there's a party scene here?' says an LPGA spokeswoman. 'We really wouldn't know.' Funny that, because half your golfers are rumoured to show up there. But they needn't worry about being recognised, as Sachs and Gans reckon that only about five per cent of their clientele actually go to the golf. 'Even if a top player walked in Ð and we've had winners of the Dinah Shore at the Girl Bar Ð our girls wouldn't recognise them.'
At the golf, played a few miles down the road from Palm Springs at the Mission Hills club in Rancho Mirage, it's soon clear that there are only two types of fan Ð local wrinklies (even the radio network calls itself The Oldies Station) Ð and lesbians. The oldies come in twos, the lesbians in fours and sixes and more. My guestimate is that 60 per cent of the crowd are lesbians.
It's hard to tell the lesbian fans apart from the players, as they are decked out in the same outfits Ð tailored shorts and polo shirts, with the more butch gals turning their collars up. It's really only a flattering look for the tall and slim, and the fans, like the players, come in all shapes and sizes. No wonder gay men don't play golf.
The older fans and the tournament marshals, many of whom have been volunteering at the tournament since it began, are fiercely loyal to the memory of Dinah Shore, who died in 1994, and are very unhappy that Nabisco took her name off the event's title last year. 'As far as I'm concerned,' said one marshal, 'it has always been the Dinah Shore tournament and always will. That woman is revered in these parts.' I tell him rumour has it that Nabisco took her name off because the tournament had become synonymous with lesbians. 'Dinah Shore wasn't a lesbian!' he says, laughing. 'And it's not just lesbians here, lots of locals come too.'
Indeed they do, as Palm Springs is a golfer's paradise, with 100 courses within a 40-minute drive in the Coachella Valley. l chat to a septuagenarian couple in the club bar, Madeline and Marv, snowbirds who escape the harsh Washington winter to stay in Palm Springs. Both sports nuts and reasonable golfers in their time, they now watch golf from the sidelines. I ask them if they are bothered by all the lesbians drinking around them. 'Hell, no. Why should we be?' says Madeline. 'The world has moved on.'
But not for the LPGA, I suggest, who appear to be afraid of the L-word. 'Do they really think people wouldn't come?' asks Madeline. 'Wow, they really don't know people very well. Marv and I come and enjoy the sport. He's always followed women's sport as well as men's.' Marv concurs, saying that the Dinah Shore, on a course he has played, is really tough. 'I tip my hat to them,' he says. 'That is one helluva course, and they are great players. As for the fans here, it takes all sorts.'
The LPGA, or more particularly Nabisco, major sponsors of this $1.5million event, would beg to differ. Despite a Nabisco declaration at the media launch of the tournament that they wish 'to make it more relevant' (whatever that may mean), mention the L-word and people suddenly go deaf, or even escort you off the premises. At a previous tournament a journalist was asked to leave the press area when she made the mistake of asking some of the players if they were gay. She was accused of 'bothering' them.
When I asked Nabisco's press representative about lesbians in the sport, the atmosphere got more and more frosty and the answers more and more terse.
Are there lesbians in the LPGA?
'That is not something we would like to comment on.'
Do a lot of lesbians follow the tour?
'No comment.'
Are there...?
'Goodbye.'
Girl Bar, whose events each attract between 2,000 and 3,000 women, books out complete hotels for the weekend (two this year, with more than 700 double rooms). With other promoters and visitors making their own arrangements, this means several thousand lesbians descend on the Palm Springs area and some of them may want, understandably, to behave badly. A few years ago, another promoter made the mistake of booking just a proportion of one hotel's rooms and complaints rained in about the frolicking in the pool and the snogging in public. One distressed family were put right off their breakfast muffins by the sound of a breakfast muffing going on next door.
Local straight guys, too, cottoned on and sat around the pool, waiting for some lesbo action, prepared with the two questions that straight men always ask lesbians; 'What do you do in bed?' and 'Will you join me and my girlfriend for a threesome?' But the collision of straight and gay worlds has its moments. One woman took pity on an old bartender, clearly wilting in the desert heat at one of the pool parties. She asked him if he was OK, but she needn't have worried. 'Oh, I'm doing just fine,' he said, looking blissfully down a line of scantily clad lovelies clutching their dollars for margaritas and beers. 'I come out of retirement for this.'
Every night of the weekend, Thursday to Sunday, there is a party or club night; 24 and buffed is the dress code, it seems Ð some of the girls tell me they have been working out for months in preparation for this weekend. It's a bit of cattle market for finding a new girlfriend at the Friday and Saturday-night clubs, although, as personal trainer Adrienne, who comes every year, tells me: 'It's possible to find the love of your life here. I did last year.' Was it romantic? 'Hmmm, not precisely,' she says. 'She was the third woman I slept with that weekend, including a wild night in the hotel Jacuzzi involving four women and a lot of champagne. But my girlfriend and I have been in wedded bliss ever since.'
There are go-go dancers at the club nights, leaving little to the imagination both in their dress and dancing. The security guards keeping order Ð remarkably few for such large gatherings Ð are recruited from the local US Marine base and it's a much sought-after bit of moonlighting. I ask one, with regulation buzz cut and rippling muscles, if he is enjoying his task. 'Yes, ma'am,' he says. Is there ever any trouble? 'Oh no. On the whole, there's nothing for me and my buddies to do but check they're not bringing in their own alcohol. But one of the guys, he was working a [gay] men's weekend recently and he was getting hit on every five minutes.'
Several thousand women in town, but nary a one welcome at the golf. What a selling opportunity, if only the tournament could bear to get into bed with the lesbians, as it were. Caroline Haines is founder and organiser of the wittily named charity competition for club golfers, the Lina Shore Classic, which attracts sporty, professional lesbians in the 35-plus age group. 'My group are definitely the ones who know there's golf in town,' she says dryly. The Lina Shore attracts about 200 for its golf tournament, and about double that for its dinner dance but, remarkably, even a mature, professional group like this has not been offered a tie-up for, say, a group discount on Dinah Shore tickets. 'The LPGA know we exist,' says Haines, 'but have never approached us to get involved. I think they're missing a trick.'
Andrea Meyerson, founder of Women on a Roll, a cultural and social organisation for lesbians that attracts several hundred for its own events over the weekend, puts it more succinctly. 'The LPGA is homophobic. They don't want us, so why should we go? I honestly believe if they welcomed us openly, then more of my members would turn up. I'm sure the feeling of being unwelcome at the golf is why the weekend has become much more of a social event than a sporting one.'
It's not as if members of the two groups above would behave in a manner likely to frighten the horses, but Haines is sympathetic to the LPGA not wanting some of the weekend visitors. 'There are things that are appropriate and there are things that aren't,' she says. 'Some don't get the etiquette of golf and have been literally lying under a tree and making out. That spoils it for everyone else.'
Haines thinks there's a difference between the LPGA wanting fans to behave appropriately, however, and it living in the real world. 'I think probably about half the players are lesbian, but only one, Muffin [Spencer-Devlin, now retired] has stepped up to the plate and come out. It's a difficult situation, because sponsors' dollars are vital and they don't want to be associated with lesbians, so the players aren't encouraged to be themselves.'
In fact, over its 50-year history, the LPGA has always been associated with gay women, far more than any other sport, which probably has as much to do with its ridiculous closetedness as with the facts Ð the less you say about it, the more it's assumed. So what about the LPGA's attempts to downplay or even deny there are lesbians in the sport? 'I find it comical, because everyone knows,' says Haines.
Well not everyone. I ask the LPGA spokeswoman about lesbians on the tour. 'We're all about golf and nothing else matters. Are there...' she stutters over the next word... 'gays on the LPGA tour? I don't know. Do I care? No. Do I want to know? No. And the same way with our fans.' She then goes on to trash what fans they do have by saying, apropos of nothing I ask: 'If you're a drunk fan and obnoxious you'll be removed. But more for your behaviour on the course.' More? Surely she means only, and how do we make that leap from lesbian to lout?
To be fair, some of the lesbian golf fans appear to take the LPGA's side. In the Mission Hills clubhouse I meet a group of thirtysomething women from St Louis. Interestingly, they are all professional (one works in marketing for Nike) and all in the closet. Every year they get a large group of friends together and rent a condo, do their own thing. They don't touch the Girl Bar events, oh no. As Becky says: 'Girls in thongs and go-go dancers in cages is not our thing.' Her girlfriend, Sammi, takes an equally dim view of the partying women. 'They give out the wrong message about women's sport. I played basketball in college and frankly if they were the type of women following the game, I'd have given it up, and I'm gay. They send out completely the wrong message.'
Uniquely among major sporting events, the Dinah Shore Ð or Nabisco Classic, as the sponsor insists we call it Ð does not release detailed attendance figures. The only released figure is a woefully low 60,000 Ð and that is for the whole week, four days of competition and three days of pro-am. In contrast, last month's attendance at the Augusta National for the US Masters was 40,000 a day. Doing a very rough headcount at the Mission Hills Club over four days, I estimate that if the LPGA and sponsors could tolerate such inflamatory behaviour as public hand-holding and necking a bottle of beer in three seconds flat, then the tournament could easily double its attendance over the weekend if the party gals in Palm Springs turned up.
It's strange that in a land devoted to the bottom line, organisers and sponsors are all but literally turning away their target audience. The businesses of Palm Springs, however, a town with a reputation for being laidback about most things Ð including being a notorious haunt for Hollywood extramaritals over several decades Ð can't get enough of the lesbians. As Pati Brown of the Palm Springs Tourist Office says: 'The women who come for the tournament are well behaved, upscale [professional] and willing to spend money. We love them being here. Of course we have complaints, but they are mostly about the noise, which carries a long way in the desert.'
Brown is also the liaison officer for the gay and lesbian community, although is herself not a lesbian. 'I don't like golf,' she quips, 'which is how folks know I'm not gay. But because of our long association with Hollywood Ð in fact many retirees here were in the film, television or music industries Ð Palm Springs has always been a safe and welcoming environment for gay men and women, whether they are visiting or live here.'
Thankfully, too, not all women's sport is as set as the LPGA on denying where its following lies. The LA Sparks, part of the recently resurgent Women's National Basketball Association, have asked Sandy Sachs and Robin Gans to promote ticket sales at Girl Bar. 'It's groundbreaking and they're a little nervous,' says Sachs. 'But they realise who their market is and are pursuing it, as opposed to saying, "There are no lesbians in basketball".' Gans adds: 'You just have to look at the stands at the Staples Centre [where the Sparks play] to realise that it's 70 per cent lesbians. It's like going to Girl Bar on a Friday night.'
Basketball is following tennis's lead in allowing the public's perceptions of the sport to catch up with reality. Where once the merest hint of dykery would have the media and fans agog because the sport was so closeted, tennis players now talk openly about their sexuality Ð French player Amélie Mauresmo gave a front-page feature to the respected culture magazine Paris Match last year, posing for pictures with her long-term girlfriend Ð and the issue has become less interesting, less naughty. In fact only two of the top 20 tennis pros are lesbian Ð in other words, roughly the national average Ð and who cares any more?
Back at the weekend's final pool party on Sunday, it's an amazing sight Ð wall to wall women in skimpy bathing costumes. Things are getting hot, and not just the desert sun. The centre of the action is in the pool itself where, as one wit puts it, 'It's like the main show at Water World.' Lots of, er, ducking and underwater action, you see. The photographer and I are both hit on for threesomes, he for one and me for two, natch. A few couples are chided by the organisers for getting a little too friendly on the sun loungers, while a security guard discreetly breaks up some alfresco sex to whoops and jeers from onlookers. My, what mixed emotions he must have. Elsewhere at the gathering, a wet T-shirt competition finds its worthy winner, the sun begins to set and the partying is over for another year.
And the golf? Sweden's Annika Sorenstam wins. Like they care.
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