Jennie K. has come a long way

In Hawaii amateur golf, the men have their Manoa Cup … and have for the past 110 years.

The women have the Jennie K. Wilson Invitational. It tees off today for the 68th time at Mid-Pacific Country Club. It is the last of the Hawaii women’s majors and the most cherished for reasons that go far beyond golf.

Its start was ignited by then-head pro Alex Beckley in the 1940s. He was looking to encourage play in his relatively new women’s division and inspired by the 36-hole Moanalua Women’s Invitational.

Mid-Pac’s full 18-hole layout was a year old when the state’s only 54-hole women’s tournament began in 1950. Jennie Kapahu Wilson, born in 1872 to an Irish father and Hawaiian mother, was nearly 80.

She was not a golfer, but the inaugural tournament committee wanted to name its event after a “woman of Hawaiian ancestry,” according to the late MPCC legend Cattie Ozawa. They chose the wife of former Honolulu Mayor John H. Wilson, a civil engineer who spoke Hawaiian.

“Auntie Jennie” was one of King Kalakaua’s court dancers at 14. She toured the world, dancing at Folies Bergere in Paris, the 1893 World’s Columbian Expo in Chicago and in front of Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and Czar Nicholas II of Russia.

She was touched by the idea of having the tournament named in her honor and gleefully attended the banquet every year until she died in 1962. She donated the monkeypod used to create the perpetual calabash trophy. The tournament motto, Kulia I Ka Nu`u (Strive for the Highest), was her idea and is engraved on the gold Hawaiian bracelet given to tournament champions.

Those champions have often gone on to great golf heights. Hawaii Golf Hall of Famers won 18 of the first 22 Jennie K’s, with Joan Damon seizing six titles and Jackie Yates three, the first at age 14. Since then, 1976 Jennie K. champ Brenda Rego, Bev Kim (1981) and Lori Castillo (1983) have been inducted.

You have to be 50 to be eligible for the Hall of Fame. For the last 35 years only one champion (Mildred Stanley in 1985) was even close. Jennie K. champions have grown increasingly younger, and scores dramatically lower. The highest winning score this millennium was 9 over. In the 1900s, only 12 winners were in single digits.

It is only a matter of time before some of these champions will be inducted.

“People write about the Jennie K. every year and tell people about the history,” Kim says. “Then the kids see it, and especially their parents, and they see Nicole Sakamoto and Kristina Merkle and Anna Umemura have won it.”

When they play, they realize the Jennie K. might be more about history than golf.

High finishers in every flight now get precious gold Hawaiian Coat of Arms pendants. Tradition is everywhere. The Doxology is sung in Hawaiian every year on the first tee, where a bottle of gin and ti leaves are always on hand to plead for pretty weather. “Auntie Jennie’s” portrait is draped in lei all weekend.

And then there is the party, with an ambience like no other. Early on, it was a luau in the parking lot, entertainment was impromptu and Jennie K. was often in the middle of it.

Over the past 60 years, it has grown more elaborate. There are usually themes, like “Da Plight of Pua Paniolo” and “Jennie Duz Jazz.” In 1980, when future LPGA player Cindy Flom Rarick won, co-chairs Nita Howell and Ozawa simply called it “Reminiscing.”

The 50th anniversary, chaired by mother-daughter Florence and Keiki-Dawn Izumi, was a chicken-skin “Treasures and Traditions.” Keiki-Dawn, twice a runner-up, had most of her Jennie K. pendants stolen years ago and remains grateful to the detective who found a few, then doggedly found their owner.

The field has fluctuated since handicap and age restrictions were put in. There were 70 players in 1955 and 177 in 1963. This year there are 115, 30 in an unusually large and deep Championship Flight.

More than a third of those elite golfers are receiving merit scholarships for golf travel from tournament organizers, who started that program last year. Next year, they are talking about a senior flight.

Defending champion Natsumi Nakanishi is back along with Kaci Masuda, last year’s runner-up. Nakanishi was the fourth from Japan to win since 2011. Jennie K. has also enticed golfers from Taiwan, Samoa, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the mainland. Claire Choi will tee it up fresh off winning her second straight state high school championship. Maybe most intriguing is the return of Anna (Umemura) Murata, celebrating what she calls “the 30th anniversary” of her last Jennie K. She is 3-for-3 in the tournament, winning in 1995, ’97 and ’98. That 1997 victory helped her become the only woman to capture all three women’s majors (Jennie K. and the now defunct State Stroke and Match Play Championships) in the same year.

Murata returns with a much different view of the Jennie K.

“It’s the ladies that make the tournament. They are incredible,” she says. “They put in so much work and are so passionate about their event and their party. That’s why it’s lasted this long, because of them.

“It’s a fun tournament. When you are so young maybe you don’t appreciate that part of it — it’s just another competition. Now I really appreciate what goes into it and the passion and history are so amazing. Now that I’m older I have a greater appreciation for what it really means for women’s golf in Hawaii.”