Indian Wells Golf Resort – Syndication Server

Here’s why the Epson Tour Championship (which is on the move) will be more important than ever

The LPGA is saying an entire year of solid play by a golfer on the Epson Tour is great preparation.

PALM SPRINGS, Calif. — The Epson Tour Championship, the season-ending tournament for the LPGA’s developmental tour, won’t be played in Indian Wells, California, until October, but already there are changes happening for the event.

The city of Indian Wells agreed to host and sponsor the tournament last November, in part as a way to showcase the city-owned golf resort and in part as a way to perhaps get the LPGA to return to the desert in the coming years.

Either way, Indian Wells is getting into the women’s golf business with the event that caps the season-long chase for LPGA exemptions for aspiring players. The LPGA announced last week that the Epson event will be a little more friendly to players looking for those exemptions.

In the past, the Epson Tour Championship awarded LPGA playing cards to the top 10 players in the season-long points battle, with the Tour Championship playing a major part in that chase. But starting in October when the Epson Tour Championship moves to the Player Course at the Indian Wells Golf Resort, the top 15 golfers from the season-long chase will get LPGA cards.

“We are thrilled to announce the news of expanded access to the LPGA for Epson Tour Members at the end of the upcoming season,” said the Epson Tour’s Chief Business and Operations Officer, Jody Brothers. “We annually review the performance data of our recent graduates, and the additional access substantiates that Epson Tour athletes are arriving to the LPGA ready to perform at the highest stage.”

In other words, much like the PGA Tour several years ago, the LPGA is saying an entire year of solid play by a golfer on the Epson Tour is better preparation for a year on the LPGA that merely working your way through the stages of qualifying tournaments.

There are some complications to the additions five cards to be offering next October, with players 11 through 15 falling into a different eligibility category but the idea is still to get more players with more tournament experience for a year onto the LPGA for the 2025 season.

Indian Wells is new host

It also means that the players who come to Indian Wells in October have more to play for than golfers in the Epson Tour Championship in recent years. That, in turn, will make Indian Wells an important part of the Epson Tour and LPGA story in the fall. That’s exactly what the city is hoping for with it deal to bring the developmental tour to the desert. Make the LPGA look hard at what the city has to offer and what the city course will produce for the women’s professional tour.

Make no mistake, the city’s gamble on bringing the Epson Tour to the Coachella Valley doesn’t necessarily guarantee the LPGA will return to the desert, at least not right away. There are plenty of issues that would have to be resolved for the LPGA, including the right spot on the LPGA schedule, television on Golf Channel and other items like the purse for an event. And the LPGA might be worried that a tournament in the desert will always be compared to the old Dinah Shore major championship.

But having the Epson Tour Championship in 2024 be a bigger part of what the LPGA will look like in 2025 certainly helps the city with its future sponsorship of the event. The Epson Tour may not be the LPGA, but the Epson Tour’s biggest event with so much riding on it could get desert fans excited, and that will produce the galleries that the LPGA will be looking at for any future decision on its return to the desert.

Larry Bohannan is the golf writer for The Desert Sun. Follow him on Facebook or on Twitter at @larry_bohannan.

Epson Tour Championship is officially heading to Southern California. Will other events follow?

Officials are making no secret that they want to bring the LPGA back to the Coachella Valley at their courses.

The Epson Tour will play its biggest golf tournament at the Indian Wells Golf Resort in 2024, but officials from the City of Indian Wells and the golf resort are making no secret that they want to bring the LPGA back to the Coachella Valley at their courses.

“First, it puts us back in the game,” said Robin Graf, the new general manager at the Indian Wells Golf Resort. “It gives us an opportunity to potentially host more events in the future, and bigger events.”

The Indian Wells City Council voted 5-0 on Thursday to approve a one-year $100,000 sponsorship for the 2024 season finale of the Epson Tour, the developmental tour for the LPGA. That event, to be called the Epson Tour Championship at Indian Wells, will be played on the Players Course of the golf resort on Sept. 30-Oct. 6.

While the Epson Tour Championship becomes the biggest golf event played at the golf resort for now, city staff and council members talked openly about the prospect of an LPGA event for the city in the future. The LPGA left the desert after the 2022 Chevron Championship at Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage, with the major championship moving to Houston. That left the Coachella Valley without an LPGA event for the first time in 51 years.

The Epson Tour event could show the LPGA that a regular LPGA event is viable for the desert in the fall, and that the Indian Wells Golf Resort is the place to hold such a tournament.

“Let’s not lose sight of the fact that we have had a golden opportunity dropped into our laps,” council member Greg Sanders said during council discussion of the sponsorship. “The Dinah Shore, the ANA tournament, the last year it was here it was sponsored by Chevron, I think. They moved out. I’m going to ask Visit Greater Palm Springs what the economic spinoff was from the ANA. I guarantee you it is huge.”

Sanders added the idea of the Epson Tour sponsorship is to get the LPGA to see Indian Wells as a top-flight candidate for an LPGA event.

“I see this as a strategic investment,” Sanders added.

City, residents benefits

The council chose a $100,000 sponsorship over a $50,000 option for the Epson Tour event. City manager Christopher Freeland explained that the $100,000 level includes everything the $50,000 level features including the city name and logo incorporated into tournament promotion and advertising, pro-am teams in the tournament, participation in a meet the pros party and VIP passes for the four days of the 72-hole professional tournament. But the $100,000 level also includes discounted tickets for city residents and a designated seating area along the 18th green for residents. Freeland also pointed out the $100,000 sponsorship might be viewed more favorably by the LPGA for any future tournament discussions.

Indian Wells is already the home of the two-week BNP Paribas Open at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden each March, the Ironman 70.3 Indian Wells-La Quinta in December and has a sponsorship deal with the Coachella Valley Firebirds hockey club. For golf, the city hosted a PGA Tour Champion event at The Vintage Club from 1981-92 and at the golf resort in 1993 as well as three years of the LG Skins Game from 2006-08.

“Golf is the epicenter of Indian Wells. It always has been since the 1980s,” council member Bruce Whitman said. “I think golf is our past, our present and our future. And so our golf resort, that campus with the hotels and the golf courses, that is the economic engine of our city. All we can do to encourage more golf in this city can only benefit this city.”

Council member Dana Reed said he supports the sponsorship deal, but would like the city staff to audit claims about the golf tournament and other sports sponsorships the city has. One such claim is the Epson Tour saying the Tour Championship will produce 1,930 room nights in area hotels, with Freeland acknowledging some of those room nights could be in other desert cities.

Freeland added that while the sponsorship voted on by the council Thursday is a one-year deal, it could lead to a multi-year agreement with the Epson Tour and deeper discussions with the LPGA about a tournament on that larger tour.

As the developmental tour for the LPGA, the Epson Tour has 24 events across the country, including one in Beaumont each March. Purses for Epson events are between $200,000 and $375,000, with the Tour Championship featuring a $250,000 purse last month in Florida.

The top 10 money winners on the tour each year earn LPGA exemptions for the following year, with the Tour Championship the final event of that exemption chase. Top players on the LPGA who have graduated from the Epson Tour include major championship winners Nelly Korda and Lilia Vu, with Epson Tour graduates winning more than 400 LPGA titles.

[lawrence-auto-related count=1 tag=451203034]

Watch: Golf influencers Troy Mullins, Tania Tare each make two holes-in-one

The Ace Race show debuted on July 1 and will be televised on Bally Sports through August.

[mm-video type=video id=01h49gxx2gkhhb30864z playlist_id=none player_id=none image=https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/upload/video/thumbnail/mmplus/01h49gxx2gkhhb30864z/01h49gxx2gkhhb30864z-f94e3275efec2d43fd17b0234f4367af.jpg]

Not one. Not two. Not three. How about four holes-in-one in one day?

Golf influencers Troy Mullins and Tania Tare did just that, with each making two aces at Indian Wells Golf Resort.

All the fun was captured on video by Breaking Par, an Arizona-based, syndicated golf TV show carried by Bally Sports affiliates across the country.

The series is called “Ace Race with Tania Tare”, a renowned trick-shot artist. Mullins is a long-drive competitor.

On this particular day on the par-3 16th hole, each golfer took aim from 140 yards out for about four hours. The contest ended once paying customers reached the hole.

Mullins was declared the winner after she hit the most balls inside a four-foot circle around the hole. In addition to bragging rights, she won a custom Phat Ride.

“Whether you’re a golfer or not, everyone knows how special a hole-in-one is, so being there to witness four aces is something I’ll never forget,” said Ryan Johnson, executive producer of Breaking Par.

The Ace Race show debuted on July 1 and will be televised on Bally Sports affiliates until Aug. 31, 2023.

Tare has a combined 588,000 followers on Instagram and TikTok; Mullins has more than 250,000 on the two social-media platforms.

Expecting a big drop in golf green fees in the summer? Maybe not in the California desert

“The demand is still there” for tee times in many parts of the U.S.

PALM SPRINGS, Calif. — For many desert golfers, the summer is the time to play their favorite recreational game. Not only have snowbirds and tourists left the desert, opening up more tee times, but the decline in the number of golfers means courses drop their green fees to attract players to get out into the heat.

Well, that’s the way it usually works. But for the summer of 2022, May 1 doesn’t necessarily mean more affordable golf.

As demand for golf has remained high since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the laws of supply and demand have pushed green fees higher. With the belief that demand will remain high in the summer – though certainly not as high as the winter – golf courses are likely to keep their prices higher than summer golfers might expect.

“It is probably safe to say that prices, they will be lower than what they were in February and March, but I think they will be higher than previous years,” said Randy Duncan, general manager of SilverRock Resort in La Quinta. “Just because the demand is still there.”

Lots of people are still playing golf

Duncan said he did a traditional drop of prices in the middle of April, but not the same kind of drop he would normally do. The reason is simple: Lots of people are still playing golf. Rates at the course for May run from a high of $118 on weekdays and $127 on the weekend for prime tee times, but those will drop to $65 and $75 by July, according to the SilverRock website booking page.

“Looking ahead in May, the weekends are very, very busy,” Duncan said. “I am sold out several weekends already, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I do keep an allocation of tee times for our local residents, I have to. So yeah, I did drop the prices some.”

That’s not the case at another busy golf facility in the desert, Indian Wells Golf Resort.

“We are delaying our price drop until the middle of May,” said director of golf Joe Williams. “So we pushed it out a little bit because we know the first three weekends are going to be busy. Not this weekend with Stagecoach, but the next two will be very busy. And our price drop is not going to be nearly as significant as in years past.”

For Williams, that means charging $149 to $159 on either the Players or the Celebrity Course at the Indian Wells Golf Resort until May 15, then down to $119 weekdays and $129 weekends starting May 16.

“We will see another drop in June, but let’s put it this way, nobody is going to be used to it because they are used to paying $55 or $65 (in the summer),” Williams said. “Well, inflation is going to raise that up 10 bucks. And with this golf boom, we will be $79 or $89 (this) summer.”

Pandemic golf boom

That golf boom, with people either taking up the game or returning to the game because golf was one of the things people could do outdoors in the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic, has continued to fuel the game the last two years. Duncan said SilverRock had its best revenue season ever for the 2021-22 season. Williams said that despite charging $199 to $209 in-season this year, his courses were still attracting more than 400 players on weekends, making him wonder if perhaps he wasn’t charging enough.

“When I was doing the budget with COVID going around, I had forecast that we’d do 50 percent of what we normally do,” Duncan said. “And just the opposite happened. It was 50 percent or more of what we normally do. So that was the first summer. COVID is awful, but it’s been really good for the game of golf for sure.”

Of course, prices will have to come down some because there will be fewer golfers in the desert in the summer with snowbirds leaving, and many golfers who live in the desert full time will avoid golf when temperatures start to hit 110 degrees or more. Mid-range to lower-end courses might still do their usual drops of fees to below $50 a round.

But Williams, for one, believes the boom will spill into the summer again, noting that one nearby hotel in Indian Wells is already booked at 60 percent capacity for the summer and that his May 7 tee sheet already has more than 200 rounds booked a week before play.

“I think there is still a pent-up demand for travel and people are still traveling,” Williams said. “And we are anticipating a big summer out there.”

[listicle id=778118257]