Back in 2020, when COVID was doing a good job of canceling everything from school days to sporting events, the LPGA major championship played at Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage was postponed from its traditional late-March date to a week in September.
The tournament weather was hot, of course, but it was also smokey because of a nearby wildfire, and only homeowners at Mission Hills were allowed anywhere near the golf course because of Riverside Country restrictions.
That year, 2020, was the only year since 1972 that Mission Hills hasn’t hosted some kind of spring professional golf tournament. That’s 53 straight years (with that one exception) with either an LPGA or senior tour event at the iconic golf course.
The absence is felt in Rancho Mirage, one club official said.
“We miss it. We loved the LPGA during that run and we loved the Champions Tour during that run,” said Dan Hewitson, senior vice president and managing director at Mission Hills. “We would welcome them during this week if either of those had sponsorship that wanted to hold those events here.”
The LPGA played a tournament at Mission Hills from 1972 to 2022, the major championship hosted by Dinah Shore for years and played on the Dinah Shore Tournament Course. That event ended when Chevron took over as sponsor and moved the event to Houston. For the last three years, Mission Hills hosted a PGA Tour Champion event known as the Galleri Classic, but that sponsorship ended after three years and tour and tournament officials finally pulled the plug on the event after a summer of searching for a new sponsor.
“It’s a little bit strange for us, as it was the COVID time frame to not have something going on in this particular week,” Hewitson said. “We would welcome the opportunity to either work with the LPGA, the PGA or the Champions Tour and are certainly open to having those events back at the club.”
That said, there is a benefit to Mission Hills in not having a professional golf event at the club for the first time since the Colgate-Dinah Shore Winners Circle debuted in 1972 as the richest event on the LPGA.
“As much as those specific events are missed, it also opens up the course for our members who are out there in droves playing their own course,” Hewitson said. “So it is for sure a bittersweet moment.”
Hewitson knows that sponsorship has been the issue in both tournaments leaving Mission Hills. The LPGA event had sponsors from Colgate-Palmolive to RJR Nabisco to Kraft to Japanese airline ANA before Chevron took over for one year in the desert while announcing the event would move. Grail, the company that developed the Galleri multi-cancer blood test, had a three-year contract to host the PGA Tour Champions event and did not want to renew after the 2025 event.
If that lack of a tournament at Mission Hills this week is a void at the club, it is also a void in the Coachella Valley golfing community. Fans knew the Chevron Championship was leaving the desert months before that final event in 2022. Fans didn’t know the Galleri Classic was ending when it was last played in 2025 as officials scrambled for a new sponsor.
The end result is just two big professional golf events being played in the desert, The American Express on the PGA Tour in January in La Quinta and the Epson Tour Championship played at Indian Wells Golf Resort in October.
For the lack of competitive golf, it’s also the players that no longer play in the desert that causes a void. The LPGA saw multiple winners like Annika Sorenstam, Amy Alcott, Betsy King, Juli Inkster, Dottie Pepper, Karrie Webb, Sandra Post and Brittany Lincicome and Hall of Fame winners like Mickey Wright, Sandra Palmer, Kathy Whitworth, Nancy Lopez and Patty Sheehan. The Galleri’s winners might not have been as spectacular, but David Toms and Retief Goosen where both major championship winners on the regular tour and names like Ernie Els, Fred Couples, Colin Montgomerie and Bernhard Langer were in the field. The senior players raved about the Shore Course from the first year the Galleri event was played.
Without a tournament this week, Hewitson says Mission Hills is still in a top position for professional events in the desert.
“We really do see ourselves as a place where champions play, whether that is champion LPGA golfers or PGA Tour golfers, whether that is hosting Davis Cups, whether that is professional pickleball, whatever your sports of choice, we are fortunate enough to have the facilities to handle those events and it is for sure woven into the fabric of what the club is,” Hewitson said.
So Mission Hills is without a professional golf event in the spring for the first time — except fort the COVID years — in more than five decades. But maybe sometime in the future, pro golf will return to the spring in the desert and maybe even to Mission Hills.
“There is definitely a little something missing this week that has been here for a long, long time,” Hewitson said. “We would love to do an event out there this week. I know that the Champions Tour would support that and we as a club and as a company 100 percent would be open to that as well and would welcome that with open arms.”
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: ‘Bittersweet’ spring at Mission Hills with no LPGA or senior tour event
Reporting by Larry Bohannan, Palm Springs Desert Sun / Palm Springs Desert Sun
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
