Nancy Lopez is coming back to The Villages.
The Hall of Fame golfer will host a charity event on Saturday, Aug. 17 for Adventures in Movement (AIM), a nonprofit organization based out of Dayton, Ohio, that uses movement to help people with disabilities.
Lopez, who serves as chairman of the National Ambassadors to AIM, will be at the Legacy Restaurant at the country club that bears her name from 3-9 p.m. and a portion of the proceeds will go toward the charity.
Lopez has supported AIM, which was founded in 1958 by Dr. Jo A. Geiger, since 1981 when she held her first golf tournament to raise money for the charity. She moved her annual tournament to The Villages in 2003 and the 39th version of the event will be held Oct. 5-7 at the Lopez Legacy Course Golf Course. Click HERE for more information on the event, which will feature a return visit by professional golfer Chris DiMarco, who was at that first Villages tournament 16 years ago.
Lopez, who at one point had a house in The Villages on her golf course, made that sure that her first AIM tournament in Florida’s Friendliest Hometown was unforgettable. It included a free concert put on in October 2003 by hit country music artist Vince Gill and his wife, Amy Grant, who was known as “The Queen of Christian Pop.”
The couple performed on a gigantic stage that ran the length of the La Reina Building on Alonzo Avenue. More than 25,000 people – many who weren’t from The Villages – attended the free show, which created quite a bit of concern among The Villages brass and led to a similar concert in 2005 being held at the polo fields with an $29 per person entry fee.
At one point during that first concert, Lopez and her former husband, baseball great Ray Knight, joined Gill and Grant onstage, as did DiMarco, actor Jamie Farr of M*A*S*H* fame and professional golfer Liselotte Neumann.
Some Villagers will remember that Lopez and late Hall of Fame golfer Arnold Palmer played a special nine-hole exhibition round together in 2002 at her course. The official occasion was the ribbon-cutting and christening of Torri Pines, the third nine in the 27-hole championship course. All three of the nine-hole courses that make up Lopez Legacy carry the name of the groundbreaking golfer’s daughters – Torri, Ashley and Erinn.
Lopez had helped design the Torri Pines leg of the course and was looking forward to playing with Palmer, her good friend and mentor. The show got under way when Ken Creely, then-director of golf operations for The Villages, introduced the two legends to the massive crowd. The temperatures were in the 70s and it was an overcast day – conditions that excited both golfers.
The day turned out to be extremely fan-friendly, as both Palmer and Lopez cut up and clearly had a great time playing together. There was no scorecard to be found. But there were plenty of photo ops with Villagers who tagged along outside the ropes and hung on every shot.
Lopez would return the favor the following year and play a nine-hole exhibition round with Palmer after his course, Palmer Legends, opened in December 2003. The legendary duo took to the course in January 2004 and once again there was quite a fanfare as they put on a memorable show for a large crowd that had gathered at the new course.
Some area residents might now know it, but Lopez at one time was sponsored by The Villages. The winner of 48 LPGA events even had a home that was built in 2003 in the Village of Briar Meadow on her golf course – the same year that she retired before deciding in 2007 to head back to the LPGA Tour.
While many lauded the partnership between Lopez and The Villages, there were many questions raised among Villagers about her house. Some believe it was part of package as a Villages spokesperson. Others said it was never really her house, but she was free to use it whenever she wanted. And the point was raised more than once that Lopez couldn’t really live in the home that much because her children were too young to be residents of the community on a full-time basis.
Others, however, were just happy to call her and Knight neighbors. Residents got a kick out of running into her at the course or while eating out at area restaurants. And she enjoyed being around Lopez Legacy while Knight, the MVP of the 1986 World Series for the New York Mets, occasionally would put on hitting clinics for some of the softball players in The Villages.
Lopez’s oldest daughter, Ashley Knight Hughey, also has strong ties to The Villages after getting married at the old Church on the Square in Spanish Springs Town Square. Prior to the church being absorbed as part the cavernous Sharon L. Morse Performing Arts Center, it hosted many weddings, and the one for Lopez’s daughter was probably one of its biggest.
That soiree also took place the same year Knight and Lopez got divorced, so there was rumored to be some tense moments involved in the event – including the two never speaking to each other nor appearing in any wedding photos together.
But in the end, a smiling Ashley and her husband rode off in an antique car. And there was plenty of cheering from those in attendance and Villagers who just happened to be on town square enjoying the nightly entertainment.
In June 2015, Lopez was in the news after announcing that she was selling her primary home in Auburn, Ala., and moving to Stuart to be closer to her boyfriend. At that time, she said she still had her Villages home, as well as a third house in Keystone, Colo. She said that she had moved into the house in Alabama after her divorce from Knight and since all three of her daughters had graduated from Auburn University, it was time to sell the home and get on with the next chapter of her life – she married longtime golfing buddy Ed Russell on June 24, 2017 in Palm City.
