Palm Springs
Watching the recent Skins Game and PGA Tour School finals makes you appreciate the golfing history of the oasis down in Palm Springs. The major season for the LPGA always commenced in April at the Dinah Shore. The Grand Slam, featuring the four major winners, was played in the Coachella Valley. Michelle Wie was disqualified there in her professional debut. It’s the place where Frank Sinatra lived and tried unsuccessfully to host his own tour event. Maybe most notably it’s where three United States Presidents once played a round of golf together in the Bob Hope Classic.
It’s hard to measure the impact that Leslie Townes Hope had on the game. The entertainment legend was raised in Cleveland, Ohio, worked the vaudeville circuit, appeared in over 50 films and emceed 17 Oscar ceremonies. Along with Bing Crosby they were the major faces of Hollywood in the golfing world. Their passion for the game forced the big shots at Paramount Studios to build their co-stars a driving range on the lot.
“They shut us down when we started breaking windows,” joked Hope.
All that practice seemingly paid off. Hope reportedly registered six career aces and always maintained a smooth tempo even when the television cameras crept in for a closer view. But Bing had a different perspective of his friend’s motion, which he once expressed in Golf Digest.
“The way he dips, sways and lurches, you wonder if he isn’t sponsored by a distillery,” Crosby wrote.
Arnold Palmer knows a thing or two about “dipping, swaying and lurching” during the swing. Maybe that’s why he had a more favorable view of Hope’s action.
“He had what I would call a casual swing and it worked very well for him,” Palmer said. “He probably could have shot in the high seventies in the early days if his short game had been a little better. I think Bob lived so long because he was a happy man and enjoyed making other people happy.”
There must be something about that sunny and crisp desert air that makes people feel cheerful. This year comedian George Lopez will become the “host” of the Bob Hope tournament. Just a couple years ago Lopez received a new kidney from his wife and now sports a 14-inch scar to show for it. He’s just happy to be healthy let alone to play pro-am golf.
The bubbly expressions on the faces of players who made it through six grueling rounds of the Qualifying School serves as another example. Sacramento’s Tom Johnson, a survivor of three stages to get his card, clinched it with a 67 in Monday’s final round. Afterwards his grin was from ear-to-ear as he looked ahead to ‘07. Bay Area native Michael Allen displayed simultaneous expressions of relief and joy, joking afterwards that keeping a job on the big tour will allow his kids to go to four-year universities.
My most memorable experience was competing in a tournament at Mesquite GC. On the surface it just seemed like a nice, nondescript public course until I studied the scorecard – six par 5s, six par 4s and six par 3s nicely adding up to a par-72. My disposition was very sunny that afternoon.
Last week my friend Ken Venturi suffered a heart attack at his home in Palm Springs. Ken underwent a successful quintuple bypass to strengthen the heart that helped him win the 1964 United States Open. I can’t think of a better place for a golfer to recover and get back on his feet.
