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Al Barkow
Al Barkow will give us stories on numerous events and players, comparing the professionals of today with the players from golf's bygone era. He is well versed on the subject having written about golf for over 40 years. His work appears in periodicals and newspapers that include Golf World, Sports Illustrated, the NY Times and many others. He is recognized as one of American golf's most notable historians. He was editor-in-chief of Golf Magazine and Golf Illustrated, and has authored a number of books on the game, most recently a biography of Sam Snead, entitled SAM, The One and Only Sam Snead.
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Sal Johnson
GolfObserver publisher
Looking back at the colorful history of the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic
January 19, 2009
By Al Barkow
Photo: © Bob Hope Chrysler Classic | | The Program from the 1992 Bob Hope Chrysler Classic |
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If timing is everything, the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic has a perfect moment to have one last shot in the golfing sun, then fold its tent. This year it is celebrating its 50th anniversary, a nice round number. What’s more, its title sponsor for the past 22 years may not be around by next year. Despite having some time left on the contract, things being what they are these days in the automotive business, Chrysler could be in a bankruptcy situation and be hard pressed to justify spending a few million bucks on a golf tournament in the future. What a mess!
I'm not saying the Hope is going to end after this year but the task ahead if Chrysler is forced to leave is daunting for Hope officials. Find another sponsor in a small-town marketplace that may be great for vacationing but not great for advertising will limit the big companies from taking over and in this tough economy, you can see what I am saying.
If by chance the Hope would end after this year it would please a lot, if not all, of the pro golf community. For quite a few years now it is has been unspoken but widely acknowledged that the majority of the pros dislike the format—90 holes, the only event on the circuit played at that length—on four different golf courses, and four of those rounds with amateurs. And we’re not talking a lot of pretty good players among the simon-pures (hey, haven’t seen that term for awhile have we?) as at the AT&T, but a lot of real hacks. Then there is the celebrity part. So many of the amateurs are Hollywood actors and comedians are not only hacks, who use the four days to promote their next show or themselves. It would be fun to see these people for a day or so, but four days of it is at least two days too much. The only good thing about The Hope, in this regard, is that they have never had Bill Murray do his ill-mannered, totally unfunny bits, like dragging old ladies into bunkers.
Photo: © City of Indian Welss | | Bob Hope was a part of his tournament through 1999. |
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This sounds a little bad-mannered, which it is not meant to be. The tournament deserves a tremendous amount of credit for the service it did in promoting the game and the tournament circuit when both were in need of it. It began in 1960 as the Palm Springs Desert Classic, won by Arnold Palmer (who would win it five times in all, and who is the honorary chairman this year). It was a kind of springboard for Arnie’s career. He had already won a Masters, but it was a couple of months later in ’60 when he won another Masters and his U.S. Open. Thus commenced his reign as The King. One could say he got himself into the winning mode for that tremendous year with his January victory in ‘the desert.’ By the way, The Hope was Arnie’s last victory on the PGA Tour, in 1973, when it was the Bob Hope Desert Classic.
It should also be noted that in the 1964 Palm Springs Desert Classic—the last time it went by that name—Jimmy Demaret, a pioneer of the Tour who enlivened it with his colorful clothes, and Texas wit, both of which buried the fact of how good a player he really was, damn near won at the age of 54. He lost to Tommy Jacobs in a playoff, and a few people kind of wished Jacobs wasn’t such a meanie and had somehow let a terrific personality and player finish his run on a high.
Photo: © J. D. Cuban /Allsport | | Bob Hope and President Ford with the "Classic Girls." |
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Bob Hope attached his name to the tournament in 1965, and still an extremely popular figure in the country gave it a special cache. It wasn’t the classier act of Bing Crosby, who was the first show business personality to put his name on a pro tournament with his Clambake, first played in southern California then moved up to the Monterey Peninsula. The Hope was Hopeian, which is as it should have been. Just as he was in his movies, on the radio and on television, the tournament reflected his more or less risqué style. The Classic Girls are a good example. A string of young beauties in a kind of chorus line wearing nicely filled tight shirts, each with a letter weaving across them spelling out Chrysler or Classic or whatever, posing for the television cameras and hovering with glistening smiles over the master of ceremonies and giggling at his gags.
Hope liked to have fun with people’s looks and names, and on national television while having a chat with Kermit Zarley, who was contending in the tournament, said, “With a name like that you must be a man from the moon.” From that day forward Zarley was often referred to as the “Moon Man,” although on reflection the name seems to suggest some more exotic planet in far outer space.
Photo: © J. D. Cuban /Getty Images | | Bob Hope had a friendly game of golf with Presidents Ford, Clinton and H.W. Bush during the 1995 Hope. |
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The Hope has been the most notable national sporting venue for famous politicians, especially Presidents, to show their golfing stuff. Dwight D. Eisenhower was the first American First Executive to play in The Hope. Gerald Ford was a long-time regular, and one year there were three of them on the tee in the same group, Ford, George H.W. Bush, and a sitting President for the only time, Bill Clinton. They teamed up with Scott Hoch. But perhaps the most memorable political “moment” was when “Tip” O’Neill, the powerhouse Boston leader of the Democrats in the House of Representatives, took an untold number of shots trying to get out of one of Pete Dye’s all-time deepest bunkers.
For most of The Hope’s the scores were quite low, owing in part to the warm and usually windless desert weather in January, and courses that were not all that demanding. In fact, it has almost always been a birdie fest and if the pros as a whole don’t like the format, those who are not playing well coming in can fill up on a boatload of birdies that might, however misleadingly, raise their spirits and lift their hopes (sic) for the next tournaments on the schedule. It is not surprising that it was at The Hope, in 1999, where David Duval shot a 59 in the final round and won by a mere stroke.
Palm Springs is a good place to play during the west coast segment of the tour. The crowds are sizeable, and might even be just as good or even bigger if they just let the pros do their thing on some of the really tough courses that are now in place in ‘the desert.’
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