All three of Hawaii’s longest-running women’s invitationals started in the 1950s. They are survivors and, for the most part, thrivers.
The oldest and most revered is Mid-Pacific Country Club’s Jennie K. Wilson Invitational, which celebrated its 68th year in May. It is a 54-hole tournament and considered the last Hawaii women’s major, won by pretty much every woman in Hawaii’s Golf Hall of Fame.
The Oahu Country Club Women’s Invitational teed off two years later and has had the most work. No one knows how old it is because some years are simply missing. They might have washed away in the Nuuanu rain or disappeared down a deep slope, two reasons why organizers changed to a simpler scoring format (Stableford) in 2009.
Then there is this week’s Waialae Women’s Invitational, in its 62nd year. It does not have 62 different champions. Kimberlie Miyamoto won her third title in four years Tuesday (Keiko Soeda was low-net champion). Bev Kim has won at Waialae in six different decades.
Like Jennie K. and OCC, the list of past champions is littered with Hall of Famers such as Kim. And, like its two invitational sisters, Waialae has survived good times and tough.
It started as a true invitational, with Hall of Famer Joan Damon writing out invitations to some of her golfing buddies.
“At first, we felt like we were not all really invited,” recalls Gerrie Ornelles, a WCC member who played the event for the first time in 1960. “Then we realized what Joan wanted to do — get people from other courses to be able to play on our course.”
When Ornelles first got involved, 156 golfers applied for 144 spots and a chance at the coveted engraved prizes. As years went on, the field was cut to 136 and 120.
People stopped coming every year and higher costs cut neighbor island participation. Also, Waialae requires participants to be at least 18. In contrast, Jennie K. has started offering youth scholarships and OCC’s entry fee for students is $40 cheaper.
This week, 102 played at Waialae, including 19 members and seven from Japan. Jennie K. is also pushing to fill its field, after years of turning people away. This year there were 115 players — 62 fewer than in 1963.
Along with opening up private courses to the rest of us once a year, and the competition, perpetuating the women’s game is the foundation of all three invitationals. It takes on more significance with fewer people golfing and many of the best competing on the mainland.
Before, Hawaii didn’t have dozens of golfers on collegiate teams. The Jennie K. in May is now too early for some college players. OCC moved its invitationals up so college players wouldn’t be gone. The men’s is next week and registration just opened for the women (at oahucountryclub.com), who play Aug. 13-14.
This week, Miyamoto had to choose between trying for the 118th U.S. Women’s Amateur — she qualified for the national championship last year — or defending her invitational title.
She chose Waialae, but 33 others who could have played were at Kapolei on Monday. It was an unusually high number because the Augusta National Women’s Amateur Championship debuts next year and the U.S. Amateur winner gets a spot, along with U.S. players high in the Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking.
“I played here because I really wanted to defend my title and I really like the atmosphere,” Miyamoto said Tuesday. “The ladies are so nice to me even though I’m so young. I’ve played U.S. Amateurs growing up and they don’t compare to playing Waialae.”
She is grateful that a few years ago, when no one was prepared to put in the months of work it takes to run an invitational, and Waialae was not going to have it, Ornelles — in her 80s — stepped up again.
“I turned around and looked at Terry Lui and Lona Furuya and some others,” she recalls “and said, ‘We are doing it.’”
Her 93-year-old friend Joan Brown, sister-in-law of the late Hall of Famer Francis I’i Brown, played or worked nearly every Waialae Women’s Invitational until she turned 90. She understood Ornelles completely.
“It’s all about connections, that’s what golf is,” Brown said. “I’m still here now because of those connections.”
