If this weekend’s Be Like Bob Memorial golf tournament really had offered everyone a chance to be like late entrepreneur and do-gooder Bob Billings, then it probably should have been a tennis tournament.

“But it’s hard to get 280 people to play tennis,” said Randy Towner, head pro at Alvamar Country Club and one of the organizers of the two-day golf benefit on the Alvamar public and private sides.

Not that Billings, the man credited with developing west Lawrence — Alvamar is a contraction of his parents’ names — wouldn’t have been around this weekend. He loved golf. Billings was a driving force in bringing the Kansas Open golf tournament to Lawrence in 1976. He just rarely brought his clubs to the course.

Mainly Billings, who died of cancer in February at the age of 65, would have been out among them this weekend, jollying with the participants and offering them a cold one.

“He would have been out on a cart visiting and making sure they were having a good time,” said Billings’ wife, Beverly, who did a pretty good job of doing just that Saturday.

At the same time, player after player told Beverly how much they were enjoying themselves.

“It was a Bob Billings kind of day,” Beverly told me. “It’s the kind of day Bob intended in terms of weather.”

The skies were sunny, but not too sunny, and the temperature was hot, but not too hot. In other words, a fine, fine day for golf and camaraderie.

“So many people have commented to me about Bob,” his wife said. “They remembered him in their hearts today, and he would be thrilled by the tribute … thrilled, but embarrassed.”

Kansas University athletic director Lew Perkins carries his two wedges and putter back to his cart. Perkins played golf Saturday at the Be Like Bob golf tournament at Alvamar Country Club.

Embarrassed because Billings was as humble a power broker as ever you’ll find. Think of George Steinbrenner. Now think of the anti-Steinbrenner. That would be Billings.

Few knew Billings better than Jerry Waugh. Back in the mid-1950s, Waugh was the top aide — actually, the only aide — under Kansas University head men’s basketball coach Dick Harp while Billings was playing for the Jayhawks.

A native of Russell, Billings was a flat-topped, bespectacled backcourt performer with at least a couple of tools, if not a full box.

“Bob had good hand reaction, and he was an excellent shooter,” said Waugh, one of Saturday’s participants, “but he didn’t have much foot speed.”

If you looked it up, you would see Billings averaged 5.5 points a game in his three varsity seasons with the Jayhawks. His most impressive stat was his career free-throw percentage of .748. Yet his most important contributions couldn’t be measured by numbers.

“He was our leader on and off the floor,” Waugh said.

Later, Waugh worked for Billings for 16 years at Alvamar Inc. Waugh, who turned 76 this year, is one of the few people who ever played golf with Billings. What kind of a player was he?

“I think he could have been a good golfer,” Waugh said. “He was a really good putter and chipper, but he was wild off the tee, and he didn’t have the patience to work at it.”

Billings gravitated to tennis when he started dating Beverly, who was more inclined to nets than links, in the mid-1970s.

Billings also maintained a lifelong friendship with Wilt Chamberlain, often advising the Big Dipper on business matters. That friendship went a long way toward convincing Chamberlain to return to Lawrence for that memorable, emotional 1998 jersey-retiring ceremony in Allen Fieldhouse. Less than two years later, Chamberlain was dead.

Before Billings died earlier this year, he was raising funds to endow a Wilt Chamberlain Scholarship at KU. Proceeds from the Be Like Bob Memorial Tournament hopefully will provide the remaining money needed to endow a grant in the name of arguably the best basketball player of the 20th century.

To tell the truth, they should probably call it the Chamberlain-Billings Scholarship, but that won’t happen. No way Billings would have wanted it that way.