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PALM SPRINGS, Calif. — 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.
There are a lot of folks instrumental to the historical past of golf within the Coachella Valley.
It is a top-10 listing adopted by one other 10 names that make up the honorable point out.
Thomas O’Donnell
One of many richest oilmen in California, O’Donnell determined to craft his personal golf course in Palm Springs. That course was the most important golf website within the Coachella Valley for twenty years, and it nonetheless exists in downtown Palm Springs at this time because the desert’s oldest course.
Johnny Dawson
A gifted and completed newbie golfer, Dawson was the developer behind Thunderbird Nation Membership in 1951. Dawson would go on to develop different desert programs together with Marrakesh and Seven Lakes nation golf equipment within the golden age after all improvement.
Dwight Eisenhower
The favored Eisenhower turned the primary president to play golf within the desert in 1954, and later lived in a home on the eleventh fairway at Eldorado Nation Membership in Indian Wells.
Normal Dwight Eisenhower enjoying golf at St. Andrews in Scotland in 1946. (Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Pictures)
Eisenhower’s love of the sport – he was a member at Augusta Nationwide in Georgia – and his friendship with two different golfers – newbie Bob Hope and professional Arnold Palmer – helped to popularize the sport within the Fifties.
Bob Hope
A desert resident for the reason that Nineteen Forties, Hope carried the message of his love of the sport world wide. In 1965, the actor and comic agreed to place his identify on the Palm Springs Golf Basic, turning that occasion into the Bob Hope Desert Basic, one of many PGA Tour’s hottest occasions. Hope died in 2003 on the age of 100.
Arnold Palmer
By 1959, when Palmer received the final Thunderbird Invitational, he was already professional golf’s hottest determine. Palmer then received 5 Bob Hope Desert Classics from 1960 by means of 1973, cementing his place as an icon within the sport and in one among his adopted properties. Palmer would later design quite a few programs within the Coachella Valley, together with a course that hosted the Hope event for years at PGA West in La Quinta.
Dinah Shore
Shore knew little about golf in 1972, when she turned the host of an LPGA event at Mission Hills Nation Membership in Rancho Mirage. She shortly embraced the sport and the gamers on the LPGA, turning into an ideal advocate for the ladies’s sport typically. She lived close to the ninth inexperienced of the Dinah Shore Event Course at Mission Hills, and a statue of Shore stands subsequent to the 18th gap on the course.
Ernie Dunlevie
One of many unique builders of Bermuda Dunes Nation Membership and one of many founding fathers of the Palm Springs Golf Basic in 1960, Dunlevie remained a power within the desert’s PGA Tour occasion till his demise in 2013. He helped information the event to success in charitable donations to Eisenhower Medical Heart and different desert charities, and he was a pal and a mentor to a younger Arnold Palmer.
Ernie Vossler, Joe Walser
As a partnership, these two golf professionals from Oklahoma reshaped golf within the desert within the Nineteen Eighties, first bringing two famend golf programs to the La Quinta Resort and later growing PGA West. They introduced within the high-profile designers, robust residential housing and the understanding that televising their golf programs by means of skilled occasions was nice advertising and marketing for the desert and their developments.
Invoice Bone
A developer of residential housing, Bone determined to start out placing his properties round golf programs in 1972, beginning at Dawn Nation Membership in Rancho Mirage. His idea opened up the thought of second properties and winter residing round golf programs within the desert.
David Foster
A forgotten determine, Foster was the pinnacle of Colgate/Palmolive and determined to make use of ladies’s golf as a technique to market his merchandise. The end result was the Colgate Dinah Shore Winner’s Circle at Mission Hills Nation Membership in Rancho Mirage in 1972, a event that reshaped the LPGA and have become a landmark event within the Coachella Valley.
Honorable point out
Amy Alcott: Her resolution to leap into the lake after successful the 1988 Nabisco Dinah Shore gave the desert and the KPA a trademark second. She repeated it in 1991, joined by event host Dinah Shore.
Invoice Clinton: The sitting president who performed with two different presidents within the 1995 Bob Hope event, Clinton would later return to the occasion in 2012 and host the occasion for 5 years, although generally internet hosting from afar. Clinton’s presence was a part of a revival of the occasion.
Pete Dye: Dye’s progressive golf programs designs, together with the famed Stadium Course at PGA West, irritated gamers however delighted viewers on the Bob Hope Desert Basic and the Skins Recreation. Golfers flocked to the desert to be dropped at their knees by Dye’s programs.
Gerald Ford: After leaving the White Home in 1977, the previous president moved to the desert and have become a fixture within the desert golf scene, enjoying within the Bob Hope event with Hope in addition to the defending champion within the first spherical annually.
John Foster: For greater than twenty years, Foster helped to information the Bob Hope Basic by means of course modifications and the evolving panorama of the PGA Tour. As president of West Coast Turf, Foster and his firm additionally actually helped form quite a few desert golf programs.
Milt Hicks: A son of an early Palm Springs influential household, Hicks was a part of the event of a number of golf programs within the Fifties together with Thunderbird and Indian Wells nation membership. He was the chairman of the 1955 Ryder Cup and the primary president of the Palm Springs Golf Basic (PGA Tour occasion).
Jack Nicklaus: Winner of the 1963 Palm Springs Invitational, Nicklaus would go on to turn out to be a famous golf course architect, and his programs are among the most necessary within the desert.
Ted Robinson: Within the desert golf increase of the Nineteen Seventies and into the Nineteen Eighties, Robinson was probably the most prolific designer of golf programs that gave the desert the texture of pleasant and playable golf for membership members. Robinson designed or renovated 22 desert programs, or about one out of each 4 desert programs on the time.
Frank Sinatra: One of the crucial fashionable entertainers on the earth, Sinatra was a long-time desert resident and was unabashed in his love of the sport. He hosted a PGA Tour occasion within the desert in 1963 and later was host of the Frank Sinatra Celeb Invitational.
Annika Sorenstam: Certainly one of three gamers to win the LPGA main within the desert 3 times, Sorenstam was on the peak of her prowess within the early 2000s. She additionally received two Samsung World Championships at Bighorn Golf Membership in Palm Desert, giving her 5 official LPGA titles within the desert, second solely to Arnold Palmer in official wins within the Coachella Valley.
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Publish date : 2024-11-28 17:04:21
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