Dena Nowotny: 98 years of zest for life, passion for golf

Dena Nowotny, a legendary and passionate golfer and advocate for the game, passed away at the age of 98 Wednesday. Here is the link to her obituary. Dena was a member of St John’s Episcopal Church. A private Celebration of Life will be held. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the First Tee of Tulsa and the Women’s Oklahoma Golf Association Scholarship Fund.

Nowotny was largely responsible for the creation of a Women’s Mid-Amateur Championship for the USGA and helped bring the first one to Southern Hills in 1987. She picked the weekend of the Oklahoma-Texas football game, knowing it might help her with her request to commandeer Southern Hills for the event. She was a member there since 1963.

“Dena was one of a kind and a true champion in both golf and life,” said Southern Hills historian Clyde Chrisman. “Her impact on golf in Oklahoma and her service to the USGA will stand the test of time. She helped create the U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur Championship and arranged for Southern Hills to host the inaugural event in 1987. She will be long remembered.”

That was just one important deed in a lifetime overflowing with them. She was a fierce competitor and a five-time runnerup in the Women’s Oklahoma Golf Association State Amateur Championship (1962, 1964, 1969, 1972, 1985). She won the WOGA Senior three times and 33 club championships including 16 at Southern Hills and 10 at Muskogee Country Club.

“Oklahoma and WOGA have lost a friend and icon with the passing of Dena Dills Nowotny,” said WOGA Executive Director Louise Bluementhal Johnson. “Not only was she a championship player but she gave back by being an outstanding USGA volunteer.  She was an inspiration to us all.”

“Dena loved to play golf and was a good player, but she also served on the USGA Women’s Committee and gave back to the game,” said fellow USGA volunteer Lew Erickson, a prominent Tulsa banker. “These women literally ran our four women’s national championships and Dena was on the committee when they started the fifth.”

Sheila Dills, who was married to Dena’s son Joey Dills until he passed away in 2019, said her mother-in-law was vibrant to the end.

“Golf was her life,” Dills said. “She was totally devoted to the USGA. She was on the U.S. Junior Girls Committee, then the Women’s Committee. She officiated Curtis Cup matches and became captain of the Senior Women’s International Matches, which took her everywhere.”

Dills said Dena played golf until she was 86 and was a fierce competitor in bridge until near the end. She loved to watch golf, particularly Rickie Fowler and Rory McIlroy, and became a huge pro football fan as well.

Here is what we published about Dena upon her 2006 induction into the Oklahoma Women’s Golf Hall of Fame (merged with Oklahoma Golf Hall of Fame in 2014).

DENA NOWOTNY (A Mind of Her Own)

In Wayne, a wide spot on U.S. 77 south of Oklahoma City, Dena Nowotny spent her childhood in the Dust Bowl days of Oklahoma playing whatever sport was in season.

Softball and basketball ball were the first loves of the self-described tomboy, who played against her uncles when there not enough friends about. And she was good, good enough to be noticed by a scout for the Grand Rapids Chicks of All American Girls Professional Baseball League, glamorized in the movie A League of Their Own. And good enough in basketball to be recruited by Phillips Petroleum for its new AAU girls team, for whom she barnstormed in the summer until her father found out and ordered her back to school (at Oklahoma A&M University, now Oklahoma State.)

The baseball career lasted one season, the summer of 1949. Nowotny, a pitcher, found the transition from softball to baseball difficult. And though she liked her first plane ride on the way from Oklahoma to Chicago, riding the bus constantly from field to field did not appeal to her. “I didn’t do all the that well and didn’t like it,” she said. “All that traveling and that stupid bus. You had a crick in your neck every time you got to the park.”

She spent another year playing professional softball for the Chicago BlueBirds in 1950 and didn’t take up golf until she was 24 and married to Joe Dobson, a former minor league baseball player. She quickly became proficient as she did at all sports.

Now in her late 70s, Nowotny still plays the game, both in the summers in Tulsa and winters at Indian Wells, Calif. She served for more than 30 years in various capacities with the United States Golf Association and was instrumental as chairman of the women’s committee for establishing the U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur Championship in 1987, with the first one held at her home course of Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa.

Nowotny saw a need for lifelong amateurs to be able to compete without the presence of the college players, whom she says are “pros in training.”

“My feeling was a true amateur was a woman that did other things, earned her own living or raised a family and still played golf. The college kids were just pros in training. Few of them had ever paid for a golf ball or a club and they had not that much else to concentrate on.”

For the past 20 years, Nowotny has played or captained the American side in an international match with European seniors called SWIM (Senior Women’s International Matches). This year’s matches in France will be her final year as captain; she stopped competing in 1999.

“It’s been a fabulous experience,” Nowotny said. “We’ve played some of the finest courses in Europe and over here. We’ve made great friends. The husbands come along and play their own matches. The competition has been fierce but friendly.”

Nowotny has always been a fierce competitor, sometimes too much so. She was the runner-up five times in the state amateur and attributes her lack of titles to nerves.

“I always got so nervous and wanted to win so badly that the pressure got me,” she said. “I never seemed to play as well in the championship match. I think because I took up golf so late and wasn’t in that position very often. I think you have to get there and be there to be comfortable.”

Losing state championships can be hard, but Nowotny has endured true tragedy in life. First husband Joe Dodson died in a car accident in 1960 when their son Joey was eight. He was adopted by her second husband Bill Dills, who died of cancer in 1971. She married George Nowotny in 1974.

Joey Dills learned golf while tagging along with his mother to various events and went on to have an excellent junior career, play for Brigham Young and spend a few years on the PGA Tour before personal problems cut short his career. He is now a successful insurance salesman married to the former Sheila Luginbuel, herself a four-time former state champion, including three consecutive from 1994-96.

“Joey had great hand-eye coordination,” Nowotny said. “It gave me great satisfaction to watch him play and see him develop. He didn’t adapt to the Tour very well. We all have our regrets and wish we’d done things differently. But he was capable of playing with any of them.”

– Ken MacLeod