Is this really the first step for the LPGA Tour to come back to the Coachella Valley?
Could playing the Epson Tour Championship at the Indian Wells Golf Resort truly open the door to the LPGA’s return to the desert after the women’s tour left following the 2022 Chevron Championship, ending a run of 51 years at Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage?
Officials at the City of Indian Wells have not been shy about how they covet the LPGA returning to the desert and making sure that return happens at the city-owned golf resort. As the Epson Tour Championship comes to the resort this week to award 15 playing cards for the 2025 LPGA season, the possibility of an LPGA return to the desert is tantalizing.
But it is hardly a slam dunk, either.
Lots of cities in the country would love to host a professional golf event, anything from the LPGA or PGA Tour or the PGA Tour Champions. But the things that have to fall into place for any such tour to bring its traveling road show to your town are numerous and varied.
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For instance:
The LPGA had a great date in the desert at the end of March and the start of April with the Chevron Championship, the major championship played under various names at Mission Hills Country Club. But that date in the first quarter of the year was gobbled up by the PGA Tour Champions with the Galleri Classic. Could an October date, with weather that can be fantastic or very hot, fit into the LPGA schedule down the road?
The Players Course at Indian Wells Golf Resort will be the home of the Epson Tour Championship this year, with the Celebrity Course the possible home in 2025 as the Players Course undergoes major renovations and re-routing. Some of those renovations will be designed to accommodate a big-time tournament better than the course’s current configuration. Will the LPGA look at the reconfigured course and approve?
The simple translation for that is money. A sponsor has to carry a large part of the cost of producing a tournament, from setting up the golf course to television costs to the purse of the event. The City of Indian Wells is the sponsor of the Epson event, but the city might not want to carry the burden of an entire LPGA tournament. That would mean finding either a title sponsor or at least a presenting sponsor to throw some money into the pot. Remember, a new event in the desert would still have a purse of at least $2 million, if not more.
Every tournament requires someone, either one person or more likely a group of people, to push for the event and convince everyone else that the tournament is a great idea. In the case of an LPGA return, the City of Indian Wells has already taken over that responsibility, so this category gets a check mark.
Again, this shouldn’t be much of a problem with so many well-established and strong non-profits and charities in the Coachella Valley. Picking just one might be the problem here. Finding legitimate candidates will be easy.
So the ball would seem to be in the fairway of the LPGA. The city wants an LPGA event and is willing to put at least some of the money up for such a tournament.
The LPGA must answer the other questions. Is the golf course right? Is the time of year right?
But there might be a much larger question. Since the LPGA already left the Coachella Valley after a 51-year run, and with the tournament that was played in the desert so iconic and so important, does the LPGA want to return to the desert at all?
Any LPGA event that comes to the desert will run the risk of being compared to the major known for decades as The Dinah. Even if a new tournament might be two or three years away at best, the newcomer will have to find a way to make itself important enough to not be overshadowed by the old tournament. In some ways, that would make an October date, as the LPGA winds down to its CME Championship, a big selling point for a new event.
Larry Bohannan is the golf writer for The Desert Sun. You can contact him at (760) 778-4633 or at larry.bohannan@desertsun.com. Follow him on Facebook or on Twitter at @larry_bohannan. Support local journalism. Subscribe to The Desert Sun.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Epson Tour arrives in Palm Springs area this week; could LPGA follow?
