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Palm Springs - My Way
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 November 2004 |
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Following Sinatra's footsteps in the California desert By JOE BARGMANN
The only thing that's more prevalent than golf courses in Palm Springs, California, is Frank Sinatra. He lives on in such places as the Date Palm Country Club, where earlier this year about 100 of The Chairman's contemporaries sat in the clubhouse for a show called "The Rat Pack Is Back." Sinatra sound-alike Dave Salera sang standards like "Come Fly with Me" and "My Way," and then the crowd motored back to their mobile homes in their custom golf carts. Sinatra's legend survives in golfers like Jack Koennecker, 89, the former pro at Canyon Country Club. Sinatra played there and took lessons from Koennecker, and the club hosted the Frank Sinatra Open Invitational in November 1963.
In Palm Springs, the epicenter of a sprawling desert golf mecca of more than 100 courses, about 40 of which are open for public play, you can get your hair cut by Rico Picone, Sinatra's former barber, at Rico's Barber & Styling on Baristo Street. And you can eat at one of Ol' Blue Eyes' favorite restaurants, Lord Fletcher's Inn, where the grandmotherly, bouffant-sporting Dorothy gladly served customers until her recent retirement, providing morsels about waiting on Sinatra himself. "Honestly, Frank wasn't much interested in the food," she told me. "It was mostly the drink: Jack Daniel's."
For fans of Sinatra and lovers of '60s-era Rat Pack ambiance, Palm Springs is tops. You could go just for the golf too, because the variety of courses is mind-blowing. During a recent trip I indulged on both fronts, checking out Sinatra's old haunts and playing a half-dozen rounds. (If you follow my lead, note that in late autumn many Palm Springs courses close periodically for overseeding.)
First I looked up George Jacobs, Sinatra's personal valet for two decades starting in the early 1950s. Now living in a shabby apartment near the Palm Springs airport, Jacobs is a frail 77, his eyesight failing, but he tells Sinatra stories with a verve and frankness (pardon the pun) that humanizes the American icon. Many of the stories are contained in Jacobs's warts-and-all bestseller, Mr. S: My Life with Frank Sinatra (2003; HarperEntertainment). And Jacobs is all too willing to repeat them in person.
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