Tag: LPGA schedule

“What might have been” has become a kind of lament for sports in the world of coronavirus.

It’s not that sports fans and athletes, both professional and amateur, don’t understand the severity of what is going on in the world. It doesn’t make sense to crowd thousands of people into an arena, a stadium or even a golf course at a time when the key phrases are “social distancing” and “abundance of caution.”

That doesn’t mean there aren’t pangs of emptiness with the passing of each event that was supposed to be played but was either wiped out completely or postponed for months and months. And so it was with the ANA Inspiration last weekend in the desert.

More: September leap: ANA Inspiration announces new date amid coronavirus threat

More: ANA Inspiration the biggest, but not only California golf cancellation because of coronavirus threat

Originally scheduled to tee off last Thursday but postponed weeks ago along with eight other LPGA events (by now, 14 events have been canceled or postponed), the ANA is more than just a tournament for the women. It’s the first major championship of the year on either the men or women’s tour. For many fans, it is the reintroduction of women’s golf for a new season, even though the season begins in January.

And it is a chance for fans to see a familiar and challenging golf course in the Dinah Shore Tournament Course at Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage, the only course that the event has ever called home.

But the tournament is more than that to the desert. You don’t do something for 48 consecutive years without it becoming part of the fabric of your life. That is true of the ANA Inspiration. Desert golf fans who have supported the event through the decades have a right to be proud about how the event kick-started the LPGA in 1972 with television, big money and an iconic host in Dinah Shore.

Players from the 1970s and 1980s still get choked up talking about Shore and how much her support for the women’s game meant, as well as the impact of Colgate-Palmolive head David Foster. They made Rancho Mirage and Mission Hills Country Club the epicenter of women’s professional golf, and that still resonates today.

It seemed like this year’s tournament was on track to be compelling from the opening tee shots Thursday morning.

First, there would have been the Dinah Shore Course. Everything was trending for the golf course to be in ideal condition, since the desert had such a great growing season for turfgrass. Was the rough going to be three inches high? Four? The greens would have been firm, but running 12 feet on the stimpmeter, maybe?

Remember, this is the favorite golf course on tour for scores of players.

Can the event be reproduced in September?

The tournament would have had the appeal of having the No. 1 player in the Rolex World Rankings as the defending champion. Jin Young Ko’s victory in the ANA Inspiration last year, a three-shot win over M.H. Lee, was her second win of the year, her first major, and it vaulted her to No. 1 in the rankings. She has stayed there ever since, with two more wins, including another major. Ko would have been a big focus for the week trying for a second consecutive ANA title.

Then again, this is the ANA Inspiration, and there are some other players who pop up on the leader board seemingly every first week of April. Brittany Lincicome loves the tournament and is looking for a third ANA title. Stacy Lewis is looking to return to the winner’s circle she visited in 2011 and nearly found again in 2015. Inbee Park won the title in 2013 and the Hall of Famer remains a threat, having won the last LPGA event played in February in Australia.

And there is Lexi Thompson, the best player in the event in the 2010s with five finishes in the top seven in the last six years, including a win in 2014 and a famous, or infamous, second-place finish in 2017 that was the talk of not just the golf world, but the sports world because of those four penalty shots she had to take.

A first-time winner against a Hall of Famer in an epic and record playoff. That’s what the ANA Inspiration can provide. That and a cold dip into Poppie’s Pond. The tournament and its great winners have been a part of the rhythm of life in the desert. It will be interesting to see how all of that translates to Sept. 10-13, the rescheduled dates for the event this year.

It will be different, but it will also be the same course and the same players and the same major impact on the winner’s career. And the same pond, though the water might be a bit warmer.

Larry Bohannan is The Palm Springs Desert Sun golf writer. He can be reached at (760) 778-4633 or larry.bohannan@desertsun.com. Follow him on Facebook or on Twitter at Sun.@Larry_Bohannan.