RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. — It is not true that I was on the first tee of the inaugural LPGA event in the desert in 1972. I haven’t been around quite that long, though it seems like it at times.
This is only my 36th year covering the major championship that has been played at Mission Hills Country Club since 1972. While I did not witness those first 15 years, I’ve always enjoyed diving into the archives to learn about the event and its players.
Having studied the tournament’s history and covered 144 rounds by the end of this week, I’ve been fortunate to witness some great players and memorable moments at the Chevron Championship.
As the Chevron Championship prepares to move to Texas in 2023, it is easy to look back on what I have seen here – and what I missed in those first 15 years.
Here are five things I’m glad I saw at the tournament (a completely impossible list to trim down to just five) and five things I wish I had witnessed:
Five things I saw
Annika in her prime
From 2001 to 2005, Annika Sorenstam was the best player in women’s golf and proved it with three wins in the desert major, including the last in 2005 by eight shots. She also had a second-place finish in that five-year stretch, one of three runner-up finishes for her in the event. Perhaps it was unfair of us to think Sorenstam was going to win the tournament every time she showed up, but it was hard not to think that when she was so good.
Karrie’s hole-out
Who knows how many shots have been hit by LPGA players at Mission Hills Country Club, but the one that stands out was in 2006. Karrie Webb, trailing at the time with the leaders a few holes behind her, holed a pitching wedge from 116 yards for an eagle on the closing hole of the tournament. That pushed her into a playoff with Lorena Ochoa, which Webb won. But the sheer joy of Webb after holing the shot from the fairway was priceless.
Lorena’s fiesta
When Lorena Ochoa finally won the Mission Hills tournament in 2008, you knew there was going to be a party. But the party erupted in Poppie’s Pond with Ochoa, family, and friends filling the pond with joy and laughter. That many people had never been in the pond before, and it was again wonderful to see such joy in golf.
Dinah in the lake
If you want to know how committed Dinah Shore was to the tournament she hosted, remember 1991. That’s the year Amy Alcott won her third Mission Hills tournament. Shore had promised to go into the lake with Alcott if she ever won the title again. True to her word, the 75-year-old Shore lunged into the lake with Alcott and her caddie Bill Kurre. That’s how you host a tournament.
Three wins by Betsy King
King is in the Hall of Fame and won six majors among her 34 LPGA victories, but she somehow still feels underrated. King won the first tournament I covered in 1987 and added wins in 1990 and 1997. She was never flashy or boisterous, but she was as good as the tour had for that 10-year period and was a pleasure to cover.
Five things I wish I had seen
Mickey winning
Wright is proclaimed by many as the best golfer to ever play on the LPGA, and her last win came in 1973 at the Colgate-Dinah Shore. She won by two shots wearing tennis shoes instead of golf shoes and walked off delighted to have won a title that seemed even then like a capstone of her career.
Nancy’s win
In the late 1970s, no one energized the women’s game like Nancy Lopez. From my first year covering the event in 1987, Lopez had chances to win the title, but her only title came in 1981 with a final-round 64, then a course record. To see her in her prime must have been something in person.
A true Dinah Shore sandstorm
Yes, the wind still blows at the Chevron Championship, but the sandstorms of the 1970s were the stuff of legend. Sand stinging the players’ exposed skin, players wearing goggles, and players having to hit driver and then two more woods to reach a par-4 are not myths, but true stories from the early days of the tournament when the course was exposed to the elements and today’s towering eucalyptus trees were still saplings.
The first tournament
What it must have been like to see 40 of the finest players in the world playing for a purse that was four or five times larger than the purse of an average LPGA event of the time. It was just a 54-hole tournament, but it was still monumental in the women’s game. Jane Blalock won the first event, and it was the start of a legendary desert run.
Sandra’s double
When people talk about the greats to play in the tournament, they never talk about Canadian Sandra Post. But Post was the first player to win the tournament twice, the first to win it in back-to-back years, and the first foreign-born player to win the title. Her wins in 1978 and 1979 weren’t matched until Sorenstam won in 2001 and 2002. Post won eight times on the LPGA, but she had the “Old Course” as it was called figured out.
That’s a lot to see in 36 years – and there are about a dozen other things that could have made the list – and too many things to have missed. But they are all memories from the tournament that seems to be going away too soon.
Larry Bohannan is The Desert Sun golf writer, He can be reached at larry.bohannan@desertsun.com or (760) 778-4633. Follow him on Facebook or on Twitter at @larry_bohannan. Support local journalism. Subscribe to The Desert Sun.