Army Invitational adds to rich history

One of the state’s oldest golf tournaments is being revived on one of its oldest courses next week when the Army Women’s Invitational returns to Leilehua Golf Course after a 30-year absence.

Originally known as the USARHAW Women’s Invitational, the tournament was a haven for Hall of Famers. It began in 1957. Martha Young captured the inaugural title. Amie Amizich won the next two.

Amizich was an Army major and physical therapist stationed at Tripler. Her claim to fame was a remarkable gift for smoking a 2-iron, one of the most difficult clubs to hit.

Edna Lee Jackola won the first of her six championships in 1962. She was the sixth woman inducted into the Hawaii Golf Hall of Fame, in 1998 along with Hope Yee the 1968 Army Women’s champ.

Jackola was one of the rare women who could compete with Joan Damon inducted a decade earlier back in the ’60s. Jackola worked with Guinea Kop, whose protgs were easily identified by their fluid swings and sweet short games. Jackola possessed both until a car accident that caused back and neck injuries shortened her competitive career.

"Edna was one of the women I looked up to," Hall of Famer Bev Kim recalled. "She had a classic swing, one that would be able to stand up against the best forever. She provided Joan Damon with the most competition whenever the two of them were in the same tournament."

Damon, the second woman inducted into the Hall of Fame after Jackie Pung, won the Army Women’s in 1971. Kim then a teacher at Leilehua took the title the year after, when prizes were gift certificates ranging from $7 to $35. Both shot in the 70s on the two tournament courses Kalakaua and Leilehua, which played to a par-75 back then.

Kalakaua was also one of Hawaii’s oldest courses, built in 1922 and once maintained by Italian prisoners of war. It closed in 2004 and the men’s Army Open, which began three years after the women’s event, is now played only at Leilehua.

Damon and Kim won with scores of 6-over-par 153 and 154, which were the first scores in the 150s since Jackola’s victory in 1962.

They started a trend. Marlene Floyd, who would play on the LPGA Tour and become a broadcaster, won with a score of 154 in 1973. Marga Stubblefield, who also played on tour, won it the next year with 157 and was inducted into the Hall of Fame with Kim in 2003.

For the next five years, Lenore Muraoka dominated. The Rainbow Wahine golfer won every championship (there was no tournament in 1978), capturing a playoff with Tura Nagatoshi the first year.

Both are now in the Hall of Fame, Nagatoshi getting inducted in 1999 and Muraoka, who won once in a 20-year LPGA career, in 2012.

Lynne Winn won four of the final six Army titles. The tournament ended in the mid-1980s, just before the LPGA was beginning its Hawaiian Ladies Open.

In 1996, Norma Baxter, head of the LPGA tournament’s volunteers and one of the founders of the Hawaii State Women’s Golf Association, started an All-Services Invitational. It melded the Army, Navy-Marine and Kaneohe events into one 54-hole tournament and lasted a few years, with Christel Tomori’s 18-shot victory in 1998 its most vivid memory.

Leilehua discovered the Army Women’s rich history by accident a few years ago and decided to bring the tournament back after the course’s renovation, which was finished in 2012. That shortened the course by 1,000 yards from the front tees, which are now 5,067 yards 2,000 less than from the tips.

The original women’s tournament drew fields of 100-plus. For the revival, organizers hoped for 60 this first year and have a field of 56. Juniors Kaci Masuda and Brittany Fan make up the Championship Flight. Kim, Jade Merkle and Marcie Rudich all HSWGA Senior champions are among those in A Flight.

The tournament has an 8 a.m. shotgun start Monday and Tuesday.