LPGA legend opens up about wildfire that devastated her Los Angeles community

Amy Alcott is safe. The LPGA legend evacuated with her two dogs, Little Joe and Bobby, to Mission Hills Country Club, where she’s had a second home since the early 90s. But before she left Santa Monica Canyon in a hurry on Tuesday, she rushed to her trophy room and picked up a small, tattered plaid golf bag, filled with cut-down clubs handmade by her father, with Duct tape on the grips.

She also said goodbye to her beloved Julie, the Lakeland Terrier buried in a French wine box under a Carrotwood tree in the backyard.

“You can have an amazing career and amazing success,” said Alcott, a five-time major champion, “and you can close these different doors of your life with grace and move on to other phases of your life.

“But when it comes down to these moments, you just hold on to the basics – what’s near and dear. It’s not the trophy room. It’s the dog buried in your backyard, and your first golf club.”

Alcott said it’s a miracle that her house of 35 years is still standing. A neighbor snuck in to take pictures. In addition to the National Guard, they’ve hired private security to protect the area from looters.

At least 20 people Alcott knows have lost their homes to the Palisades Fire, which has burned more than 20,000 acres and is only 8 percent contained. In 1974, Alcott made history as the first female to compete in a state championship for the Palisades High School boys’ team. Her high school is now gone. So too are the grocery stores she frequents in Pacific Palisades.

Alcott, a 29-time winner on the LPGA, recalled a time she’d won somewhere on the East Coast and flew back to L.A. and stopped at Gelson’s on the way home just before they closed. There in the cheese department stood Tina Turner.

“I couldn’t believe that was Tina Turner,” said Alcott. “I thought I’d had too much to drink on the plane.”

Gelson’s is gone now. As is the gas station where she helped Anthony Hopkins with his credit card.

Alcott told so many stories celebrity stories on tour that the late Mary Bryan dubbed her “Hollywood."

“It’s part of your fabric,” said Alcott, of living near the Palisades all these years.

Alcott’s current home sits about 3 miles from where she grew up in Brentwood. Her LPGA and World Golf Hall of Fame career began at Alcott Golf and Country Club, the course she designed in her parents’ front yard. She’d chip out of the ivy and putt into sprinkler heads and soup cans. Mom finally gave up on her rose bushes. Her dad built a sand trap.

“Everyone thought the Alcotts were always fumigating,” she said of the huge net in front of the house.

So far, Alcott’s childhood home remains out of danger but with high winds still in the forecast and more fires popping up, she remains on edge in the desert.

Her Santa Monica Canyon residence sits just a couple minutes' drive from Riviera Country Club, where Alcott became a junior member in high school. She refers to her modern, three-story house with a pool as a “dream home.”

When it came time to leave on Tuesday with her Scottish Terrier and adopted mini Schnauzer, Alcott gathered up some important papers and a small number of photographs and ran into the trophy room, where she made peace with the fact that much of career treasurers might soon be reduced to ash.

She didn’t take any clothes. The apocalyptic sky, she said, was changing to a bright red and there wasn’t time.

“I turned on the radio in the car,” said Alcott, “and there’s Elton John, signing that song ‘I’m Still Standing’ and I thought, I hope so.”

This article originally appeared on Golfweek: LPGA's Amy Alcott talks about devastating Palisades Fire