I know golf and lesbians have a big connection. My first kiss with a woman, I was wearing golf shoes, and it was after a golf tournament. 

I had a crush on LPGA player when I was in college. She knew my family, because my dad owned a golf shop. I went to dinner at her house once, with a group of people, and she modeled her Dinah Shore bathrobe for us. It’s the bathrobe winners get after jumping in the lake near the 18^th hole. 

This year, I went back to Palm Springs for the first time since coming out. Now the largest lesbian party on the planet, the event included more celebrities and parties than ever before, with many of the big names attending for the first time ever. The event organizers of the original Dinah have since split, and now the parties are hosted separately by the two groups: Club Skirts and Planet Out have events at the Doral, and Girl Bar has events at the Wyndham.

While the Dinah Shore parties are tied to the golf tournament – the parties are always held the same weekend as the tournament – there is no official connection, although according to the New York Times organizers were approached about having one, even though it never happened. 

This year, with Patty Sheehan and Rosie Jones both retired from the LPGA tour, there are also no openly gay golfers currently playing. A reporter wrote a biography about Karrie Webb a few years ago, but she has never confirmed that she is gay. 

I didn’t meet a lot of golfers this weekend, but I met a lot of athletes and celebrities, and worked hard to unravel the golf-lesbian connection. 
 
The Accidental golfer

I am in the parking lot of the Doral, one of the two host hotels, and I see a golfer walking towards me wearing a red Izod polo shirt, khaki pants, and a baseball cap. I get excited. She walks right up to me – and I realize it’s Doria Biddle, who hosts her own radio show on Sirius and has been a writer for the Rugrats cartoon (I knew those babies sounded like homos, I tell her). Bitch, the singer and girlfriend of the "The L Word’s" Daniel Sea is standing in line in the lobby.

The way of Wimbledon 
The first big party is the White Party, where everything – lesbians, walls, go-go dancers – are draped in white. This year, compared to the party I went to seven years ago, has a lot less people following that dress code, thank God. Heading down the hall,  model Alex Hedison ("The L Word"), Amanda Bearse ("Married with Children") and Suzanne Westenhoefer all walk past me, wearing colored shirts.

7 out of 10 lesbians don’t know

The first thing lesbians would ask me, when I asked them if they were going to the golf, is, “Why? Are you playing in the tournament?” or, “Is it too late to sign up to play?” Leessbiiianns. Seriously. This is like saying you are going to watch the Broncos play the Raiders, and someone asking if you are playing in the game. 

Commercial break 
At a house party hosted by some UCLA employees, we stop to watch a taped Men’s Final Four game during brunch. There is an LPGA commercial, with Annika Sorenstam, Grace Park, and a few other golfers. I poll the room. No one can name a single one of the golfers. 

Teaching Jane Lynch to play Marco Polo 
I run into Jane Lynch ("40-Year Old Virgin", "Best in Show", "The L Word") at the first big pool party the next day at the Doral.  She notices that I am deaf in one ear, just like she is, by the way I talk and lean into a conversation. We joke about tough childhoods. I got beat at the pool game Marco Polo, and she was baffled that you could use both ear pieces in a headset. This is her first Dinah Shore.  “It’s what I thought it would be -- sunburned drunk people, and a little unruly. I just busted my Dinah Shore cherry.” Lynch, who was recruited after being spotted in the hallway in high school by a coach to play basketball, has no idea why the golf is so big, but she does see the gay attraction to singer Dinah Shore. 

Fore! 
The only golf I saw this weekend was played by a bunch of men. Behind the Doral, there was a golf course that backed up to the pool. The hole was a water hole, which meant there was a lake between the hotel pool and the golf green. I watched three foursomes in a row of men hit the ball far left, on the shore of the lake closest to the pool.

 Swooning housewives 
Michelle Wolff of the Here! Network’s "Dante’s Cove" and Jackie Warner of Bravo’s hit show "Workout" compared abs up on stage at the pool party. I talked to Wolff about it later. Jackie saw Michelle getting out of the elevator in the hotel lobby, and yelled, “Get OUT!” when she saw Michelle and her abs. Jackie, a former soccer player, has straight Midwestern housewives all over America swooning over her six-pack. She says they flood her e-mail inbox.

Body check

At "The L Word party" on Saturday night, with super model and sports fan (she says so on her website) Honey Labrador on stage, and Michelle Wolff (I can mention her repeatedly, because she is a swimmer and this is a sports website) walk down the runway in a bra and an open jacket.

I see Michele Kort, the author of the book, “Dinah: Three Decades of Sex, Golf and Rock n’ Roll” with the Advocate editor standing next to me, snapping away furiously with a camera. Work, work, work. Michele is holding a bunch of notes, with what looks like about 20 lines of handwritten observations. I am holding a margarita and a camera. I briefly wonder what exactly Michelle has on the piece of paper, and how many ways you can write, “1,000 half-naked women body-checking each other to see lesbian models and the cast of 'The L Word.' ” 

Married. With Children.  
I run into Amanda Bearse again. This funny woman gives a serious answer to the ties between lesbians and sports: “Besides just the chicks and the pooI, there is a connection between lesbians and athletics, because a lot of women who are athletes know their bodies, because they are using their bodies to play their sports, and have that self awareness on that level. That doesn’t mean that every female athlete is a lesbian.” 

To be or not to be 
The next day, I go to the Wyndham pool party, which is insane – think gay male circuit party gone lesbian. The Doral is made up of the famous lesbians, the Wyndam party is made up of the “We-don’t-care-who-you-are-or-what-we-do-in-public” set. Woah. I saw. A lot. Of. A lot. Let’s leave it at that. 

I meet a rugby player, a volleyball coach, a competitive cyclist and two helicopter pilots. 

I look at my watch. I think up ways to delay my trip to the course. The Wyndam is the closer of the two hotels to the golf course.  

Chasing unicorns: Finding golf fans at the LPGA Dinah Shore 
Allegedly, there were three women that had gone to the golf instead of the Dinah Shore Wyndam pool party. I tried to get names and numbers. Suddenly, the details got fuzzy. No one could remember their names, for sure, or tell me how to get in touch with them.  

I went to the Nabisco Golf Tournament, and all I got was this ...

Parking pass. I went and picked up my parking pass for the golf, but by the time I drove three plus miles away from the course to park, I realized that by the time I got on the shuttle, and hiked it into the course, the golf would be over. 

The siren of 10,000 Lesbians 
Back at the Doral, to interview the surfer babes of the new "Curl Girls" show coming up on Logo, I run into Michelle Wolff leaving the hotel. I tell her I went to see the golf, and she asks me who won. I told her I had no idea. She asked me who was in the lead. I gave her a blank stare, the stare I have been given all week when I mention it. I said Se Ri Pak, because I couldn’t remember any of the names. She looks at me skeptically. Ten years of being a sports reporter erased from my head by the siren of a thousand lesbians. Good guess – Se Ri was one of the leaders heading into Sunday. 

She talks about Annika Sorenstam’s performance at this match, and at games past. She knows Annika has won the tournament three times (Michelle nails that stat – that’s exactly how many times she has won). 

That means one of the women doing the most this weekend – fashion show, pool appearances, publicity shots, working for Here! – was able to keep up with the golf. There is hope.

Gay male football players

Michael Serrano was around all weekend, promoting his new show, the "Big Gay Sketch Show." It took a gay man – make that a gay football player – to come up with the final answer for why lesbians love golf and the Dinah Shore.  Serrano was one of a handful of men attending the event, gay and straight. He was a lineman, first left tackle, for Carson High School in California. “These girls know how to party,” said Serrano. “Definitely a lot of eye candy. I think golf is a lesbian sport because it was really accessible to ladies early on, and there are lot of women that can express themselves physically through the sport.”

LPGA player Rosie Jones

While there wasn’t an LPGA player out on the links, there was an out player playing golf. Rosie Jones has just started a new golf outings company with her girlfriend, and they played golf all weekend and attended some of the events, although I never saw her or her group. Jones is also doing commentating on the Golf Channel for other golf events throughout the year.

The golf you (I) missed

Morgan Pressel became the youngest player to win a major, as well as the third golfer to have the Nabisco be her first win. Watch it here.

Kaki Flynn is an Outward Bound instructor, and has covered sports for the US Olympic Committee, AfterEllen.com and other publications.  

April 5, 2007