Tag: Dinah Shore Tournament Course

With Chevron leaving, PGA Tour Champions brings new golf tournament to Palm Springs area

The event will be played on the Dinah Shore Tournament Course at Mission Hills Country Club.

Just two weeks after the LPGA Tour played the Chevron Championship in the Coachella Valley for the 51st and final time, another professional tour will take advantage of that void by bringing a new event to the desert on the same course.

The PGA Tour Champions, a division of the PGA Tour for male golfers 50 and older, will hold a new event in the desert March 24-26, 2023.

The event, to be called the Galleri Classic, will be played on the Dinah Shore Tournament Course at Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage, the same course that hosted the LPGA major championship for 51 years. The Chevron Championship was played for the last time in the desert earlier this month, with the event moving to Houston in 2023.

The senior tour will make an official announcement along with revealing other details of the new tournament at a news conference Tuesday at Mission Hills Country Club.

“It’s not only very exciting for our tour, it’s something our players have wanted for a very long time, but it is exciting to keep and bring consistent professional golf to the Coachella Valley,” said Miller Brady, the president of the PGA Tour Champions division of the PGA Tour.

Brady said the new tournament came together quickly with sponsor Grail, Inc., a Menlo Park, California-based biotechnology company. One of its products is Galleri, a test for those adults, particularly over 50, who have elevated cancer risks.

Part of the birth of the new tournament, Brady confirmed, was the LPGA’s announcement last October that it was leaving the desert.

“We didn’t think that the area could sustain one of our tournaments with the PGA Tour (The American Express) and the women there all in the first quarter,” Brady said.

The second and third quarters of the year can’t host a tournament in the desert because of high temperatures, Brady said, and the fourth quarter for the PGA Tour Champions is already filled, including the Charles Schwab Cup playoffs.

Brady said that long before he took over as president of the PGA Tour Champions in 2018, players from the tour have asked why the tour doesn’t hold a tournament in the Coachella Valley.

“They have great memories there,” Brady said. “And the demographics there are perfect for us.”

While The Dinah Shore Course will host the tournament in 2023, Brady said the tournament could move around the desert to other courses starting in 2024. He said the tour will soon check out other potential desert courses.

“Whatever it is, it has to work for us,” Brady said.

A statue of Dinah Shore overlooks the 18th green at Mission Hills Country Club Tournament Course in Rancho Mirage, Calif., March 24, 2022. 

The Coachella Valley has not hosted an official PGA Tour Champions event since 1997, the last of three years for the Liberty Mutual Legends of Golf at PGA West in La Quinta. The desert also was home to one of the first senior golf events, the Vintage Invitational, sponsored by Gulfstream Aerospace. That event at The Vintage Club in Indian Wells started in 1981, when the tour was known as the Senior PGA Tour, and moved to the Indian Wells Golf Resort in 1993, the last year the tournament was played.

Other desert tournaments that included senior golfers in the 1990s included made-for-television events The Diners Club Matches and the Lexus Challenge, both short-lived tournaments in the desert.

Players who were stars on the PGA Tour and now play a majority of their golf on the PGA Tour’s senior circuit include two-time Masters champion Bernhard Langer, a winner of 43 Champions events, along with major championship winners Ernie Els, Retief Goodson, Vijay Singh and Fred Couples and top senior players like Scott McCarron, Colin Montgomerie and Miguel Angel Jimenez. Other golfers who play at least some golf on the PGA Tour Champions include Phil Mickelson, Jim Furyk and Davis Love III.

“Most of our guys play every tournament,” Brady said. “We don’t have a depth of field problem. Unless there is an injury or they have a wedding to go to or something like that, our guys are all in.”

Among the golfers who won The American Express is David Duval, who famously captured the 1999 title with a final-round 59 to overcome a seven-shot deficit. That win helped push Duval to No. 1 in the world rankings. Now a rookie on the PGA Tour Champions, Duval is eager to play again in the Coachella Valley.

“It does make a lot of sense, and especially the timing of it,” Duval said of the new Coachella Valley event. “It falls into a great spot on the schedule, and it fills a great gap.”

Duval, who has made five starts so far as a PGA Tour Champions rookie, says the senior tour can appeal to fans in different ways.

“I think there is excellence, excellence in the golf being played,” Duval said. “There is also some nostalgia that is involved with it, because these are the players that so many people are familiar with, you know, watching and admiring. And I think the fact that the players are that much more approachable on the Champions, friendly and engaging.”

Bob Ragusa, CEO of Grail, said the union of the PGA Tour Champions and the Coachella Valley made sense for his company and its new cancer detection drug Galleri.

“You think about the guys on the PGA Tour Champions, all over 50, and at some point they have all been touched by cancer in some way, them or their family or friends,” Ragusa said. “So to be able to partner with the PGA Tour Champions and spread awareness of our Galleri product for the next five years makes sense to us.”

Ragusa also said that he considers Grail to be a California company rather than a Menlo Park company, so being part of a PGA Tour Champions event in Rancho Mirage works well for the company,

“It’s more than just the golf course,” Ragusa said. “It’s the scenery. It’s the atmosphere. It’s just everything,”

While PGA Tour events feature between 144 and 156 players playing four days with a mid-tournament cut, PGA Tour Champions events are generally three days and 54 holes with a field of around 80 players and no cuts. The tour does play five major events, which are four-day tournaments, including the U.S. Senior Open and the Senior PGA Championship. The PGA Tour Champions events are usually broadcast on Golf Channel, and purses for regular events range from $1.6 to $2.5 million.

The PGA Tour Champions will play 27 events this season. For next year, the desert event will follow the Hoag Classic in Newport Beach, played this year March 4-6 and won by Goosen.

The other California event on the senior tour is the Pure Insurance Championship to be played Sept. 23-25 in Monterey.

The LPGA’s Chevron Championship, with Chevron as the new sponsor, will be moving to the Houston area in 2023 with the promise of a new May date, NBC as a television partner and a purse increase to $5 million which began the year.

Larry Bohannan is The Desert Sun golf writer. He can be reached at larry.bohannan@desertsun.com or (760) 778-4633. Follow him on Facebook or on Twitter at @larry_bohannan. Support Local journalism. Subscribe to The Desert Sun.

[mm-video type=playlist id=01es6rjnsp3c84zkm6 player_id=none image=https://golfweek.usatoday.com/wp-content/plugins/mm-video/images/playlist-icon.png]

For the first time in three years, the LPGA’s first major championship of the year will finally have this essential ingredient

The LPGA’s first major of the year didn’t have fans the last two years. That changes at the newly named Chevron Championship.

RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. — The LPGA’s first major championship of the year was held twice in the last two years despite the COVID-19 pandemic. But both in 2020 and 2021, the tournament was played without one essential ingredient for sports events: fans.

That changes this week at the newly named Chevron Championship, formerly known as the ANA Inspiration.

“Finally. We have been counting down,” said Alyssa Randolph, tournament manager for the Chevron Championship. “We really look forward to it. I mean, fans really bring energy and excitement and the players feed off of that. What a great year to bring that back, and we can’t wait to have them.”

The Chevron will be the first major sporting event played in the desert with full ticket sales, no vaccination mandate, no requirement for proof of a negative COVID-19 test and no mask mandate since the American Express on the PGA Tour was played in La Quinta in January of 2020.

Other non-sports events like the Coachella Music Festival and the Palm Springs International Film Festival were either canceled or held in modified fashion since the pandemic hit in the spring of 2020.

At both the 2020 tournament, rescheduled to September from April, and the 2021 event that was held in its traditional April dates, the Chevron allowed only members of Mission Hills Country Club onto the Dinah Shore Tournament Course, and then only in the backyards of their homes or in homeowners’ association common areas. Ticket sales were eliminated because of state and County of Riverside restrictions on gatherings of large crowds. But those restrictions have been eased as the COVID-19 case numbers have dramatically dropped.

“We are following closely with the state of California and we were advised that the county is following State of California guidelines on the mega events, which we fall under,” Randolph said. “That’s outdoor sporting events for more than 10,000 people need to require (stiffer protocols). So we don’t have 10,000 people per day, so we are just following state guidelines on this.”

While fans won’t need to be vaccinated to buy tickets because of local regulations, others at the tournament will need to be tested or vaccinated under LPGA protocols, including amateurs playing in the tournament’s pro-am. That’s because pro-am players will be in relatively close contact with the LPGA pros.

[listicle id=778256949]

Heat, course, wind don’t slow down Patty Tavatanakit at ANA Inspiration

Patty Tavatanakit defied the course conditions, strengthening winds in the afternoon and temperatures in the mid-90s, at the ANA Inspiration.

RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. — Officials at Mission Hills Country Club thought the Dinah Shore Tournament Course might play so tough for the ANA Inspiration this week that a winning score in single digits under par for 72 holes would be a reasonable expectation.

Patty Tavatanakit needed just 31 holes to surpass that mark.

Tavatanakit, the 21-year-old Thai golfer who played her college golf at UCLA, defied the course conditions, strengthening winds in the afternoon and temperatures in the mid-90s that caused her to feel tired in the middle of the round to maintain the lead in the LPGA’s first major championship of the year Friday.

She shot a 3-under 69 while other golfers were fighting to stay at or near even par on the day, putting Tavatanakit at 9-under 135, one shot ahead of Sanshan Feng.

ANA Inspiration: Leaderboard | Photos

The key, Tavatanakit said, was to not think about the magnitude of the event.

“I didn’t want to take it like, oh, I’m leading a major championship,” she said. “I just want to look at it like it’s another round, it’s another tournament. Even though it is a big tournament, I don’t want to put emphasis on it like it’s a major.”

Feng, playing in the afternoon, also shot 69 despite three bogeys in her round. Despite playing on what is considered a long hitter’s paradise, where the LPGA’s biggest hitters take advantage of the par-5s, Moriya Jutanugarn managed a 69 in the morning wave of tee times to get to 7-under, alone in third.

[vertical-gallery id=778096604]

Jutanugarn, ranked 131st on the LPGA average driving distance stats at a fraction under 240 yards, fired a 3-under 69 on Friday to move to 7-under for the tournament. She took sole possession of the lead at the first major championship of the year as the morning wave of tee times finished their round. Jutanugarn had four birdies in the round, but just one on a par-5, that being the second hole on the Shore Course.

“It’s just about patient out there,” Jutanugarn said. “I mean, I’m not a long hitter so I just have to take what I can and just trying to play smart and put myself into, you know, like places I can have a good chance.”

Opinion: Great Wall of Dinah overshadows dramatic ANA Inspiration finish

The LPGA had a dreamy finish in store for the ANA Inspiration, but it all came to a crashing, truly comical halt at Mission Hills.

It seemed almost destined to happen.

Build an eyesore of a wall on an island green and balls will bounce. Bogeys will turn into birdies. Even an eagle! It’s the same for everyone, of course. But the LPGA had a dreamy finish in store, and it all came to a crashing, truly comical halt.

Mirim Lee won the tournament outright with her three chip-ins, including an electric eagle on the 72nd hole. No one can dispute the way she coolly kept her head in the game while the blonde bombers traded blows in the spotlight.

But Lee’s eagle came on the heels of a 5-wood that might have found the water had the Great Wall of Dinah not stopped it cold. That was the plan all along for Lee, and no one can blame her.

The blue wall behind the 18th green at the ANA Inspiration during a Golf Channel broadcast. (Beth Ann Nichols/Golfweek)

“I definitely thought to utilize the back and the backboard,” said Lee after her victory dip. “When I had practice rounds, I had practiced that shot, so it was a definite for me to use the space there.”

Golf fans can’t blame Lee, but they can blame the LPGA and tournament organizers for constructing a wall that’s even bigger and closer to the green than the usual grandstand when there were plenty of other ways available to give ANA the attention it deserves.

It’s a wonderful thing, carrying on sponsorship duties and providing an opportunity for play during a global pandemic.

Yet the wall created unnecessary controversy. It wasn’t easy to accept an obstruction on an island green even with seats there for important guests. But we did because someone has the pay the bills, and on the LPGA title sponsors are vital at the majors.

Take out the seats and the guests though, and it simply didn’t make sense.

Brooke Henderson’s second shot on the 72nd hole came in so hot it went underneath the wall and got stuck. Her sister/caddie Brittany crawled inside the blue mesh to retrieve the ball as Katherine Kirk worked out how she might hit a shot from the ledge of Poppie’s Pond, where it says “Do not dive. Do not step.”

“That’s closest to the hole from the diving board today,” joked Golf Channel’s Jerry Foltz after Kirk managed to not only hit a nifty little shot, but also stay dry.

Judy Rankin tried to hold back about the wall throughout the week on the broadcast only to ultimately say what most were thinking as the wall took center stage.

“The fact is, it has been way too artificial,” said Rankin. “There was no real reason for it to be there. There were no spectators, or clients or anything like that. And it has affected play way too much.”

On the heels of the Sophia Popov snub, this was another bad look for the tour.

Tune in for the big finish! Nelly Korda! Brooke Henderson! Lexi Thompson!

Fans who don’t normally watch the LPGA might have flipped over to Golf Channel for the conclusion, only to become instantly perplexed by the presence of a wall.

The LPGA can make it right in 2021, by taking the finishing hole back to its roots as an island green and eliminate the grandstands. At the very least, move them as far out of play as possible and downsize. Make the closing par 5 a true championship test, one that puts risk back into the equation.

This week felt similar to 2007 when the Women’s British Open was first contested at the Old Course, and they played the Road Hole as a par 5 and it ranked the easiest hole for the week. (Thankfully that was fixed in 2013.)

The depth of talent in the women’s game and quality of play has never been better. There’s plenty to showcase.

But sometimes the LPGA just can’t get out of its own way.

[lawrence-related id=778065857]

As LPGA preps for ANA Inspiration, how hot is too hot?

The ANA Inspiration’s five-month move on the calendar makes heat one of the top storylines at Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage.

The ANA Inspiration is often referred to as the Masters of the LPGA because it returns to the same course each year and is heaped with tradition, such as the winner’s leap into Poppie’s Pond on Sunday. In a normal year, the ANA is the first major on the LPGA calendar – it is played in April as the golf season is just starting up.

The ANA’s five-month move to September raises the temperature on the event, literally. Heat is one of the top storylines this week at Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage. More on that below, plus a few other things to note:

The heat

The Palm Springs area just saw a weekend where the thermometer hit a record-breaking 122 on Saturday and 120 on Sunday. How hot will it be this week should be a topic of conversation for everyone during the ANA Inspiration. The weather forecast calls for it to be a little cooler. Desert residents might handle 105 degrees, but we probably aren’t walking 18 holes of golf in that kind of heat, either. Some players will react well, others might struggle. Hopefully, the temperatures will stay under 110 degrees on the weekend.

No defending champion

This is no one’s fault, of course, unless you blame the coronavirus. Jin Young Ko didn’t make it to Mission Hills to defend her title because of travel restrictions and an abundance of caution. That means she can’t join Sandra Post and Annika Sorenstam as winners of the ANA Inspiration in consecutive years.

Jin Young Ko
Jin Young Ko poses with the ANA Inspiration championship trophy in 2019. (Photo: Kelvin Kuo/USA TODAY Sports)

Changes to the golf course

Some long-time players might be stunned that more than 100 trees have been taken out of the Dinah Shore Tournament Course, giving the course a more open look in the rough. Members seem pleased with the trees being removed, but the trees were part of the landscape of the tournament over the last 30 years or so. Every course at some time has to deal with aging trees, and that’s what has happened at the Dinah Shore Tournament Course this year.

An American winner?

The last player from the United States to win the ANA Inspiration was Brittany Lincicome in 2015. Lincicome is one of three Americans to win the tournament in the decade of the 2010s. With players like Danielle Kang, Nelly Korda, Lincicome, Stacy Lewis and other Americans looking for a win, and a handful of top Koreans out of the field, could the decade of the 2020s start with an American victory?

No fans

Maybe having no fans on the golf course won’t mean much to players who are playing the fifth hole on a Thursday afternoon. But the players who make the cut for the weekend will certainly miss the atmosphere of supportive desert fans on the first and 10th tees as they begin their rounds and on the 18th green Sunday. The tournament is doing lots of things to create some atmosphere for the players, but there is no substitute for high-fives with fans as the winner walks up the 18th green before crossing Poppie’s Pond.

[lawrence-related id=778064538,778064601,778064576,778064521]