Amy Alcott knows Riviera. She knows it because she grew up around the corner a golf obsessive. She knows it because she worked her way from a homemade net-and-hardware-store backyard setup to sharing the putting green at Riv alongside Dean Martin and Rita Hayworth. She knows Riviera because she’s a member now, which means she has love for the iconic, devilish drivable 10th and the epic amphitheater 18th but also for the quieter corners, like the big-tree boundary-line par-4 12th or the eucalyptus-lined 16th.

Amy Alcott knows major championship golf. She knows this major championship, the U.S. Women’s Open, one of her five major titles. Alcott won the 1980 playing at Richland Country Club in Nashville, Tenn., a brutish mid-July affair with 100-degree temperatures and only one 72-hole score under par: Alcott’s four-under-par 280, a tournament record. She won by nine.

Amy Alcott knows Southern California major-championship golf. She was the first to make the famous leap into Poppie’s Pond by the 18th green at Mission Hills at the tournament then known as the Dinah Shore. She won that championship three times.

So there’s no better ambassador for this week’s U.S. Women’s Open than Alcott, who at 70 has added to her Hall of Fame playing career with layers of coaching, writing, advising, course design — and, of course, playing. This is the same woman who designed and operated Alcott Golf and Country Club, after all. Because she loved to play.

You can listen to Alcott’s full Drop Zone interview here.

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