“The Desert Inn golf course is being surrounded by a substantial stone wall, making a beautiful effect against the hillside.”
That small nugget buried amongst dozens of different objects on desert life is likely one of the earliest identified references to the nine-hole golf course on the famed Desert Inn in Palm Springs. Positioned on the primary street of the rising village of Palm Springs, the Desert Inn in the present day is commemorated with a historic marker on Belardo Highway within the downtown park throughout from the Palm Springs Artwork Museum.
That golf course, later often called the Mashie Course, disappeared within the Sixties, however is acknowledged as the primary golf course in what’s now regarded, 100 years later, as one of many golf capitals on the planet, with greater than 120 programs unfold throughout greater than 50 miles from Desert Scorching Springs to Thermal within the Southern California desert.
The seventh inexperienced of the Desert Inn Golf Course, also referred to as the Mashie Course, full with a tree within the placing floor, in Palm Springs in 1924. (Palm Springs Historic Society)
“I didn’t realize. I had heard about Palm Springs, of course, but never been down here for anything,” stated Al Geiberger, an 11-time winner on the PGA Tour and long-time valley resident initially from Northern California. Geiberger first got here to the desert to play golf in 1958. “We played this little nine-hole course (O’Donnell Golf Club) where you played two sets of tees. And it was so nice, the weather, the mountains, the other courses. And it was a good time of the year, in the spring.”
Over the last 100 years, golf and the Coachella Valley have turn out to be virtually synonymous. From celebrities to skilled golfers to part-time residents to guests, golf has been and stays a big a part of the material of desert life.
“By the time I was 10, I had gone from pushing balls into the sprinkler heads in the front yard to playing golf and playing junior tournaments,” stated LPGA and World Golf Corridor of Famer Amy Alcott, a three-time winner of the LPGA main match within the desert. Alcott’s household usually visited the Coachella Valley from the Los Angeles space.
“We were in the car and we would drive by the old Canyon Hotel and it was like first class,” Alcott stated. “That was really happening. It was a classy place. (My father) took me in and went into the golf shop and he was not a golfer. And I think it cost $25 to play nine holes when most golf courses were about $5 or $6. And he paid and he drove me around in the cart and I will always remember that and the old Canyon Hotel.”
Amy Alcott holds the trophy alongside with Dinah Shore after profitable the 1988 Nabisco Dinah Shore on the Mission Hills Nation Membership in Rancho Mirage, California. (David Cannon/Allsport/Getty Photographs)
In celebration of a century of golf within the desert, right here’s a take a look at how golf went from a scratchy nine-hole course in a meadow to the figuring out exercise of the Coachella Valley.
The Desert Inn Mashie Course was hardly the massive and manicured golf course that golfers are accustomed to in the present day, that includes broad grass fairways, large lakes and acres of sand.
As a substitute, the Coachella Valley’s first course was, Tom Keiley stated, a meadow with some golf holes and some tees etched into it. The course was so primary and so unmanicured that an present tree within the meadow was allowed to develop in the course of the seventh inexperienced. Keiley, the great-grandson of Desert Inn proprietor Nellie Coffman, grew up in a home on the Mashie Course, a home moved from Palm Canyon Drive to the course after World Battle II.
“It wouldn’t be like you and I going out and playing nine,” Keiley stated. “It was going to the front desk of the hotel and grab some clubs and go out.”
Subsequent got here two iconic desert golf programs.
Thomas O’Donnell, one of many richest oilmen in California, liked the Desert Inn, however wished a greater golf course. He partnered with Coffman to have her construct a house within the desert mountains for O’Donnell in change for cash to renovate the Desert Inn. O’Donnell then purchased 33 acres of land on the base of the mountains only one block from Palm Canyon Drive. The oilman laid out his personal nine-hole course in 1927. Extremely-private at first, O’Donnell finally allowed golfers from the rising space to play the course. The course nonetheless exists simply north of the Palm Springs Artwork Museum.
One other course in Palm Springs adjoining to the brand new El Mirador Lodge debuted in 1929, simply months after the El Mirador and its iconic bell tower itself opened. The bell tower nonetheless exists as a part of Desert Regional Medical Middle on Indian Canyon Drive in Palm Springs. However the golf course was suffering from sturdy winds and by no means gained traction within the space earlier than closing only a few years later.
Miles from Palm Springs, San Francisco businessman Walter Morgan constructed a resort he known as the Lodge La Quinta, now the positioning of the La Quinta Resort, giving the realm a brand new identify. With different leisure actions accessible, Morgan finally added a nine-hole golf course, additionally in 1927, charging $1 per spherical.
After that, little modified within the desert golf scene till 1946. That’s when aviatrix Jackie Cochran and her husband Floyd Odlum determined to construct some golf holes on their ranch in Indio. Cochran’s pal, Helen Dettweiler, a gifted golfer who flew missions throughout World Battle II with Cochran, designed the course and oversaw its development. She was the primary head professional on the 9 holes that also exist in the present day as a part of Indian Palms Nation Membership and Resort in Indio. Dettweiler would finally be one of many unique 13 founders of the LPGA Tour.
The increase sees desert golf explode
After a gradual begin, golf took maintain of the desert within the Fifties. Whereas the earliest programs have been hooked up to motels or, within the case of O’Donnell Golf Membership, only a personal proprietor, the brand new programs of the Fifties glad each a rising curiosity in golf in addition to a burgeoning fascination within the desert as a part-time getaway for Hollywood stars or for others as a everlasting residence.
The primary of the brand new programs constructed was Thunderbird Nation Membership, constructed on the stays of a dude ranch and opened in 1951 as the primary 18-hole course within the desert. Developed by novice golfer Johnny Dawson, the course grew to become a magnet for Hollywood stars Bob Hope, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, baseball star Ralph Kiner and his spouse, tennis star Nancy Chaffee, and songwriter and actor Hoagy Carmichael.
Milt Hicks (proper) often called Mr. Golf within the desert, is seen right here in a golf cart with Sen. Hubert Cain of Washington state someday within the Fifties at Thunderbird Nation Membership. (Thunderbird Nation Membership)
Restrictive membership insurance policies at Thunderbird, lengthy since deserted, partly led to the event in 1952 of Tamarisk Nation Membership, additionally in Rancho Mirage. Quickly after, desert builders realized there was the potential for nice development with golf programs surrounded by housing in personal golf equipment.
Indian Wells Nation Membership was added in 1956, adopted rapidly by Eldorado Nation Membership in 1957, greater than doubling the variety of programs within the desert in simply six years. Two extra notable personal golf equipment – La Quinta Nation Membership and Bermuda Dunes Nation Membership – opened in 1959. The golf equipment that arrived within the decade redefined desert golf, attracting extra celebrities and extra high-end residents to the Coachella Valley.
Think about Ernest Breech, president of Ford Motor Firm within the Fifties when he was a member at Thunderbird. When Ford got here out with a brand new mannequin within the Fifties, Breech determined to call it after his desert golf residence, giving beginning to the Ford Thunderbird.
Different programs like Shadow Mountain Golf Membership in Palm Desert and what would turn out to be Palm Springs’ municipal golf course, now the Legends Course at Tahquitz Creek Golf Resort, have been additionally constructed within the Fifties.
The attract of the desert
Geiberger gained two golf occasions within the desert within the Fifties – the 1958 Palm Springs Invitational, a males’s novice championship, after which defended the title in 1959. After the 1959 match, Geiberger was invited by pals to play a brand new course they’d joined, and he found the attract of the desert.
“They took me out after the tournament was over, and we played Eldorado,” Geiberger recalled. “We played the course and all I remember was the sweet grapefruit hanging from the trees. Being able to reach up during a round and pick a grapefruit, that was amazing.”
“I remember the exact same thing playing Eldorado there, not in the tournament but in the practice rounds, you would do exactly that,” stated Terry Wilcox, who performed within the Bob Hope Desert Traditional 11 occasions. “Go over and grab an orange or a grapefruit or something. At that time, it was such a novelty to even think that you had seen an orange tree. We didn’t have any of those in Oklahoma.”
Professionals and leisure gamers rapidly found golf within the desert provided extra than simply 18 holes of play.
“As much as the wins I’ve had and the golf, it’s the elements that I grasp onto ever since those days of driving down with my family, that are so important to the visceral sense of playing golf in the desert and winning in the desert,” Alcott stated. “There was always something about nature. The smell of the orange blossoms. It’s the wind coming through the pass there in the desert. It’s the way the air smells. There are certain things about desert golf, Palm Springs golf, that are as much a part of it as winning.”
For Judy Rankin, World Golf and LPGA Corridor of Famer and 1976 winner of the Colgate Dinah Shore match at Mission Hills Nation Membership, the climate, the sunshine and the palm timber have been solely a part of the glamour of {golfing} within the Coachella Valley.
Judy Rankin taking part in golf in 1976. (Fred Mott/Night Customary/Hulton Archive/Getty Photographs)
With so many professional occasions and leisure gamers at so many programs, Rankin all the time was struck by how a lot the desert was immersed within the recreation.
“There are many great golf courses and they are in the middle of cities or they are around the world and all this, but the desert is so full of golf, that overall, the desert is what I call a golf environment,” Rankin stated. “And I think so many of us that have played golf, do play golf, did play golf, whatever, whether hardcore for fun or hardcore for your career, we are so comfortable and kind of happy in that golf environment.”
The celebrities convey sparkle to the golf course
Three high-profile golfers and match hosts – Bob Hope, Dinah Shore and Frank Sinatra – hardly inform the story of star-studded golf within the Coachella Valley.
Celebrities, whether or not from the leisure world or the company world, have been a part of the Coachella Valley since earlier than golf confirmed up. As soon as the earliest programs within the desert opened, whether or not O’Donnell Golf Membership in Palm Springs or the nine-hole course on the Lodge La Quinta, they drew high-profile gamers who started to form the picture of the Coachella Valley as a Hollywood playground.
Gerald Ford and Bob Hope. (Frank Tewkesbury/Day by day Categorical/Hulton Archive/Getty Photographs)
Hope was among the many golfers at O’Donnell within the Nineteen Forties, however so too have been desert regulars like Jack Benny and the staff of Charles Correll and Freeman Gosden, the celebrities of the Amos and Andy radio present that was broadcast at occasions from Palm Springs.
Ben Hogan was the largest identify in skilled golf when he agreed to be the pinnacle golf skilled at Tamarisk Nation Membership in Rancho Mirage in 1952.
By the Fifties, celebrities had turn out to be an integral a part of the desert golf scene, with Hope, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Hoagy Carmichael, Phil Harris and others residing at Thunderbird Nation Membership, whereas stars just like the Marx Brothers, Danny Kaye, Jack Benny and others residing and taking part in at Tamarisk Nation Membership.
The celeb connection grew within the Fifties and into the Sixties with celebrities who lived within the desert taking part in in native pro-ams. Finally celebrities from leisure, sports activities and politics performed on nationwide tv within the PGA Tour’s Bob Hope Desert Traditional. The Nabisco Dinah Shore additionally had celebrities in its pre-tournament pro-am, and the Frank Sinatra Movie star Invitational grew to become one of many largest celeb occasions within the nation.
Within the desert, the celebrities not solely mingled with different less-famous desert residents, however with the skilled golfers as properly.
“She was a huge star, and the thing about Dinah was if you knew her personally, she was exactly the same person she was on TV,” Rankin stated of Dinah Shore. “So what it really was, was the real Dinah was the person who people from afar got to know. She was exceptional in that regard.”
Wilcox remembers taking part in within the 1963 Frank Sinatra Invitational PGA Tour occasion at Canyon Nation Membership in Palm Springs and assembly Sinatra himself.
“That was quite a deal, too, to be able to come in and play in his tournament and actually meeting him and talk to him,” Wilcox stated. “He was quite the star at the time. Sinatra was a different kind of big star. He was the man.”
The presidents discover a playground
Dwight Eisenhower could have been essentially the most well-known president to play golf within the desert, however Gerald Ford introduced a contact of the frequent man to each the presidency and desert golf.
“He was the former president of the United States, and people wanted to get up close to him,” stated Ernie Dunlevie, a long-time board member of the Bob Hope Desert Traditional, now The American Categorical, in a 1998 interview. “They wanted to see him play lousy golf just like they did.”
Invoice Clinton, George Bush and Gerald Ford on the Indian Wells Nation Membership for a pro-am forward of the Bob Hope Traditional (Paul Richards/AFP through Getty Photographs)
Ford elevated golf and the presidency to new ranges within the desert when he performed within the Bob Hope match in February of 1977, simply days after leaving the White Home. Ford grew to become a fixture within the match and the desert, residing within the winter at Thunderbird Nation Membership in Rancho Mirage.
“When we left the White House, we looked at Florida, but it was too damp for Mrs. Ford’s arthritis,” Ford stated within the e book “50 Years of Hope.” “We looked at Pebble Beach. Again it was too damp and too windy. And we’d been coming here, we had friends here. So the climate and the friends, it seemed like a good place.”
Lengthy earlier than Ford took over the presidency, the desert had been branded a playground of the presidents. That began with Eisenhower, who made two journeys to play golf within the desert whereas he was within the White Home. Like Ford years later, Eisenhower selected to reside part-time within the desert on the eleventh gap at Eldorado Nation Membership. His friendship with Bob Hope and his love of golf and the desert led finally to the constructing of the Eisenhower Medical Middle.
By the years, different presidents performed golf within the desert as properly, usually at Sunnylands, the personal property of former Ambassador Walter Annenberg. These presidents ranged from John Kennedy to Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan. Throughout his presidency, Barack Obama performed at Sunnylands and later returned to the desert a number of occasions for golf at programs like PGA West.
The height of the presidency and desert golf got here on Feb. 15, 1995, when the world watched as three presidents – sitting President Invoice Clinton and former Presidents Ford and George H.W. Bush – performed within the first spherical of the Bob Hope match with Hope and defending champion Scott Hoch. Clinton would later return to the match, then known as the Humana Problem, for 5 years as host of the occasion.
“We were all playing bad, but we had a heck of a good time,” Clinton advised The Desert Solar in a 2012 interview concerning the famed 1995 spherical. “Scott Hoch played with us, and he played better from tee to green than I think I have ever seen anybody play.”
The builders
Three golf builders within the desert helped push issues to new ranges within the Coachella Valley. And so they gave the impression to be related in a line of success.
First was Johnny Dawson, an completed novice golfer who gained the PGA Tour’s 1942 Bing Crosby Professional-Am in Rancho Sante Fe and performed on the U.S. Walker Cup staff. Dawson developed Thunderbird, the desert’s first 18-hole course in 1951. By his connections with Hollywood as a member of Lakeside Nation Membership in Los Angeles, he helped to convey celebrities to the residential a part of the event. Dawson later developed or performed a component in desert programs like Marrakesh Nation Membership in Palm Springs, Seven Lakes Nation Membership in Palm Springs and Eldorado Nation Membership in Indian Wells.
“In 1960, I played a round with Johnny Dawson when I played Thunderbird (in the Palm Springs Golf Classic),” Geiberger stated. “I didn’t realize how big a name he became in the desert, but I learned about it. I knew he was a good amateur.”
When Invoice Bone of Dawn Firm, a developer of condominium initiatives that includes tennis and swimming swimming pools, was requested to have a look at Marrakesh Nation Membership, a Dawson improvement, an thought struck Bone.
“I plotted building the kinds of homes we were building in our communities already around the golf courses and I realized I could sell homes on a golf course for the same price we were selling these little planned units, communities with a swimming pool and a tennis court,” Bone advised The Desert Solar in 2023.
The end result, beginning with Dawn Nation Membership in Rancho Mirage in 1974, was a string of residential golf properties that exploded within the space within the Seventies, making second properties and retirement properties with golf reasonably priced. Monterey Nation Membership, The Lakes Nation Membership and Indian Ridge Nation Membership – all in Palm Desert – and extra just lately Toscana Nation Membership in Indian Wells have been Bone developments.
Within the early Nineteen Eighties, Bone was requested to assist construct properties for 2 former touring and membership professionals from Oklahoma – Ernie Vossler and Joe Walser – who labored for Landmark Land and pushed golf and houses even increased within the desert. Their jewel was PGA West, the place they reached out to big-name course designers like Pete Dye, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, bringing demanding golf programs and televised tournaments to the realm.
“Ernie was a big-time thinker. That’s what Ernie was,” stated Wilcox, who labored for Landmark at Mission Hills Nation Membership. “He thought big. And he devised all these projects in his head, and he’d run them by Joe and Joe would put the finishing touches on them. Together, they were one hell of a team.”
The tournaments appeal to the highest professionals
When individuals take into consideration golf within the desert, it’s simple to give attention to the 2 long-time skilled occasions within the space – The American Categorical on the PGA Tour and the LPGA main championship related to Shore and performed below a wide range of sponsor names for 51 years in Rancho Mirage. However match golf dates again to 1935 and a two-day, 72-hole occasion that featured Corridor of Famer Walter Hagen and Horton Smith, who earlier that yr had gained the primary match at Augusta Nationwide that might later be known as the Masters.
The group of Jason Day and Shane Lowry walks up the tenth fairway through the third spherical of the 2024 The American Categorical at PGA West Stadium Course. (Ray Acevedo-USA TODAY Sports activities)
Whole purse for the occasion was $2,000. A author for The Desert Solar on the time stated they may, “see in the tournament a splendid opportunity to obtain nationwide publicity for Palm Springs and to establish this resort and its courses on the ‘winter golf map’ of the country.”
By 1952, Thunderbird Nation Membership was internet hosting an unofficial PGA Tour occasion. Three years later, the world watched as Thunderbird hosted the 1955 Ryder Cup between the USA and Nice Britain and Eire. The Ryder Cup returned in 1959 at Eldorado Nation Membership. That yr ended the Thunderbird Invitational, however by the following yr, the Palm Springs Golf Traditional started at 4 desert programs, a match that lives on because the PGA Tour’s The American Categorical. Hope hosted that match from 1965 to 2000.
What Hope meant to the PGA Tour, Shore meant to the LPGA when she agreed to host a brand new ladies’s match at Mission Hills Nation Membership in 1972. Shore introduced prompt credibility to ladies’s golf, stated Rankin, a Corridor of Famer and vp of the LPGA on the time.
“Huge. So huge I can’t tell you,” Rankin stated of Shore’s impression. “I really think, I’ve said this many times, she had the respect of the entertainment world, and she kind of brought that respect to our world, which was really important to us at the time. Because thanks to Colgate and a couple of other things, we were in a wonderful growth spurt.”
One of many earliest PGA Tour Champions occasions additionally was performed within the desert – The Classic Invitational at The Classic Membership. It began in 1981 and featured profitable professionals corresponding to Gene Littler, Miller Barber and Don January.
The Skins Sport, which first got here to the desert in 1986 at PGA West, virtually invented postseason, or Foolish Season, golf. It was adopted within the desert by occasions just like the Diners Membership Matches and the Lexus Problem for senior golfers and celebrities. There was even a preferred made-for-television occasion performed in primetime below the lights for 3 years at Bighorn Golf Membership in Palm Desert. The Battle at Bighorn noticed a revolving format that every yr featured the No. 1 participant on the planet, Tiger Woods.
The surge and the longer term
As profitable and vital as golf has been within the desert, the game has confronted challenges within the final 20 years. In a pattern that mirrored the remainder of the nation, fewer individuals have been taking part in golf, and 4 golf programs within the desert have closed within the final decade. Some questioned the quantity of water used on programs throughout droughts, and plenty of nation golf equipment discovered different actions for golfers who simply weren’t taking part in as a lot anymore. Just one golf course has been constructed within the Coachella Valley within the final 16 years, that being the ultra-exclusive Ladera in Thermal.
Then got here the COVID pandemic in 2020, and by some means golf within the desert surged.
“The resurgence of it has really happened during COVID when people wanted to be outside and find things to do that they could be outside for,” stated Colleen Tempo, chief gross sales and advertising and marketing officer for the Go to Larger Palm Springs advertising and marketing and tourism bureau. “And I think since then it has regained a lot of popularity. We’re seeing a lot more multigenerational golf and kids golfing with their parents and dads and moms. All types of new kinds of ways golf can be enjoyed.”
Not like the Fifties and Sixties, when golf together with tennis have been the primary leisure actions within the Coachella Valley, golf now should compete with all kinds of actions within the desert in the present day. That features casinos, sporting occasions and live shows at Acrisure Enviornment, music festivals and extra, issues that didn’t exist in some instances even 10 years in the past. However Tempo stated that also helps golf.
“The wide variety of activities have brought in the broad demographic of people who are now exposed to golf, who maybe wouldn’t have been before,” Tempo stated.
For now, simply as has been true for many of the final 100 years, golf stays on the forefront of the Coachella Valley’s picture.
“The brand of golf for greater Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley is such a strong brand that it is something that it is known for worldwide,” Tempo stated. “It’s a very sturdy pillar of our vacation spot, each for residents and guests and teams and attracting tournaments. So there’s a wide range of totally different ranges of what meaning for the vacation spot.
“We have kind of built the brand already, so now just kind of keeping on top of how it has evolved and changed and how people can experience it in a way that kind of works for them and their lifestyles,” she added.
