WEST CALDWELL, NEW JERSEY | The news jarred many sensibilities, especially among traditionalists and those who have followed the game for longer than five or six years. Last Tuesday, the LPGA announced that the ANA Inspiration, the first major championship of every golf season, will become the Chevron Championship with the new sponsor ponying up a purse of $5 million.
That, in and of itself, wasn’t earth-shattering news. Sponsors come and go and event names change all the time. Anybody remember when the Travelers Championship was the Sammy Davis Jr. Greater Hartford Open, or when Buick seemed to have a tournament every month on the PGA Tour? Entire tours even change with the times. Just ask any Hogan Tour winner who finds himself as a Korn Ferry past champion. The LPGA Tour event in the California desert started out as the Colgate Dinah Shore. Eventually it became the Kraft Nabisco. And most recently it was the ANA Inspiration when a Japanese airline stepped in for a good run. Now, Chevron will add more heft and bank to the event.
“This move elevates us and elevates this event to a whole new level,” said LPGA commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan. “It’s the natural evolution of things. You are either moving up or down and this is definitely an upward move.”
Chevron’s presence will also ensure that this major has network television coverage, a goal the LPGA Tour continues to strive for in every event. Those are all positives. And none of that news raised an eyebrow. It was the second part of the announcement that got everyone’s attention. Beginning in 2023, the championship will move away from Mission Hills and Rancho Mirage, away from Dinah Shore Drive and the shadow of long-gone celebrities like Bob Hope and Frank Sinatra. The new location will be somewhere in or near Houston, Texas. And its new week on the schedule will be later in the spring, post-Masters.
“The new host club will be confirmed in the coming months,” according to a Tuesday statement from the LPGA. “Moving the date later in the spring also allowed the LPGA to secure a long-term commitment from NBC Sports to air the championship on network TV. Further, moving to a major area like Houston will foster tremendous fan engagement, participation and excitement within the community and among Chevron employees.”
Indeed, it will do all those things. It will also put a capstone on an era. No more Poppie’s Pond. No more beautiful mountain scenes from the Coachella Valley. No more flashbacks to Judy Rankin or Amy Alcott or Betsy King hitting shots on the Dinah Shore Tournament Course, on holes about to be played by Nelly Korda and Jin Young Ko. The future of Dinah’s statue, which waves to everyone crossing the bridge at No. 18, remains unknown.
“We have all made some lovely memories at Mission Hills over the years which we will enjoy celebrating in 2022 and take with us to the Chevron Championship’s new home, where I know we will make many more,” Lydia Ko, who is the player representative on the LPGA board, said before the announcement.
There are, of course, cries of discontent. Terry Wilcox, the tournament director from 1994 through 2008 and the man for whom Poppie’s Pond is named (it’s what his grandchildren call him), called the move “disappointing more than anything.” Ted Weill, the mayor of Rancho Mirage, California, issued a statement that said: “It’s truly hard to find the words to express the emotion of the closing of such a significant chapter in our great city’s history. I myself am a 25-plus-year member of Mission Hills Country Club and have seemingly spent a lifetime witnessing and participating with the world’s best female golfers as they competed in Rancho Mirage each year.”
But like everyone, Wilcox and Weill understood. Five mil, network exposure and a title sponsor with $240 billion in total assets and $94.5 billion in annual revenues will make you shrug and say, “OK, makes sense. I might not like it, but I get it.”
You have to give ANA credit. They deserve a standing golf clap for sticking it out and honoring their commitment through the pandemic when airlines were decimated and international travel came to a screeching halt. But it’s time for a change.
There are a few howlers, people who want to equate Mission Hills and the first women’s major to Augusta National and the first men’s major, which is silly. The condos and personal golf carts, some tricked out with Bentley grills and rosewood dashboards, give you a hint that, while a nice spot, this 72-hole facility, owned by ClubCorp, is not Pine Valley West.
Then there are the galleries, or lack thereof. COVID-19 aside – and the state of California kept the event from being at full throttle in both 2020 and 2021 – fan presence has dwindled below what would be expected for a healthy non-major. The grandstands beside and behind the 18th green have been about half full for years and once you get out to Nos. 2, 3, and 4, it has looked like a Symetra Tour event.
In the end, major or not, the course is the canvas; the golfers create the art. They are the ones who turn a major into a masterpiece. As for leaving the desert, Shirley Spork, one of the original 13 founders of the LPGA and a resident of Palm Springs, said it best when Marcoux Samaan told her about the move. “Good,” Spork said. “You have to move forward. Grow or die.”
That sentiment sums it up for almost everyone.
Top: Patty Tavatanakit celebrates on the 18th green after winning the 2021 ANA Inspiration.
E-Mail Steve