Bob Hope died 22 years ago. His name has not been on the marquee of this week’s PGA Tour event since 2011. But make no mistake, the tournament now known as the American Express would not be what it is without Hope’s contributions from 65 years ago.
The longtime entertainer and comedian played golf all over the world—he estimated that he played 2,000 different courses in a January 1979 issue of Golf Digest—playing with presidents, kings, actors, singers and tour pros, among others. One of his closest friends was singer/actor Bing Crosby, who hosted the PGA Tour event at Pebble Beach for more than four decades. Many people in the area still refer to the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am as the Crosby. Hope was one of the main attractions of that event for 20 years.
“Bing was always a little better player than me,” Hope said to Golf Digest in 1979. “At his peak he was a 2-handicapper. My best was a 4, but mostly I played at about a 6. Bing took the game seriously. I like to play it for laughs.”
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Hope was interested in supporting a tournament of his own in Palm Springs, and there was already event run by the Thunderbirds. Ben Hogan also happened to live there at the time and was working at Tamarisk Country Club.
Milt Hicks, known as Mr. Golf in Palm Springs, asked Hope if he’d take over the pre-existing event in the late 1950s. Originally, he declined. But then organizers found Chrysler to be a sponsor—it was also sponsoring Hope’s television show—and he could not turn down the opportunity.
The tournament name changed over the years from 1960-2011. It was the Palm Springs Desert Golf Classic the first year when Arnold Palmer took home the title. It was played at Thunderbird, Tamarisk, Indian Wells and Bermuda Dunes. The purse was $12,000.
Camerique
Over the next four years it was the Palm Springs Golf Classic, from 1965-1983 it was the Bob Hope Desert Classic, the Bob Hope Classic in 1984 and 1985, the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic from 1986-2008 and then the Bob Hope Classic for three years until Hope’s name was removed from the title after 2011. He died in 2003.
In each of those 52 years, the event was 90 holes, not the traditional 72, which it’s been each year since 2012.
The Golf Digest issue from January 1979 celebrated Hope’s 50 years of playing golf and also gave a nod to his involvement in the PGA Tour event for the 20th consecutive year.
“I don’t remember the score, but I know I was hooked on the game them,” Hope said regarding his recollection of his first round of golf in the summer of 1929 at the Meadowbrook public golf course in Minneapolis. “I took some lessons and began hitting the ball pretty well.”
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com