Hope-Less in the Desert
Back in November, it was leaked that the PGA Tour was considering a far tauter schedule starting in 2027.
No longer wanting to go toe-to-toe with the NFL playoffs and continually seeking to host best-on-best golf with smaller fields and larger purses, the Tour’s power structure let it be known that starting its season after the Super Bowl was a legitimate possibility.
Among existing events thus put in potential crosshairs: January’s American Express.
The good news is that the AmEx was recently confirmed for next year in La Quinta. The bad news is that the quelled questions of today will likely be the same 12 months from now. The NFL isn’t going anywhere and that still means potential tumbleweeds in the desert come 2028.
Scottie Scheffler’s four-shot AmEx win in 2026 saw him become the first-ever world No. 1 to win the event (since said rankings began in 1986), while his presence — along with 18-year-old upstart Blades Brown — resulted in a 284 percent Saturday viewership ascent on Golf Channel when compared to the third round in 2025, along with a 127 percent jump when contrasted with the previous year’s Sunday broadcast.
The 2026 event’s concert series was sold out for Old Dominion’s post-round show Friday night, with at least 15k fans teeming along the PGA WEST driving range; and, of added note, the tournament’s sponsor is signed on through 2028. Meanwhile, across 67 years of continuous play, the event has donated nearly $70 million to local Coachella Valley charities.
These years of desert yore should not be simply wiped away with the brush of a modern-day Tour pen. As longtime attendees and golf fans are well aware, prior to the turnstile of sponsors, the event’s “Hope” moniker (dating from 1965-2011) both extended and enhanced a celebrity tee-sheet that garnered more fanfare than most of the actual golfers.
Drawn by Bob Hope’s luminary lure, the event cemented Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley beyond as a “playground to the stars.” Sinatra played in this pro-am, as did Dean-O and Sammy and Burt Lancaster and Jackie Gleason and Jack Lemmon; in later years, under different variations of the Hope, the tee sheet continued to brim, seeing the likes of Michael Jordan, Matthew McConaughey, Justin Timberlake and Samuel L. Jackson place tee to pro-am turf.
Jocks and entertainers aside, the event’s presidential participation itself is unrivaled. Starting with President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s passion for desert golf, in concert with nearby Sunnylands serving as host for presidential swings and summits, tournament turf and desert escape proved a place where politicos actually smiled across the 20th century.
On-course AmEx achievements prove equally riveting. Arnold Palmer won this event five times (including his final Tour win in 1973), while the likes of Jack Nicklaus, Johnny Miller (twice), Fred Couples, Phil Mickelson (twice) and Jon Rahm (twice) all predate Scheffler on the AmEx trophy; in 1999, winner David Duval’s closing 59 authored the first-ever sub-60 final round in Tour history.
And all this tradition is under threat of being swiftly eliminated? Well, it’s happened before, and the scars are still healing. A mere four years ago, after more than a half century at Mission Hills CC in Rancho Mirage, sponsor Chevron moved the LPGA’s colloquially known “Dinah” major championship to Texas, and this past spring the PGA Tour Champions evaporated after a mere three years of playing its Galleri Classic at the same Dinah Shore Tournament Course.
Alas, akin to responses from players of lesser renown during the event’s opening rounds, there was not much to be heard in the form of a savior spokesperson. While it’s unquestioned that players continue to revel in the Valley’s welcoming weather and idyllic playing conditions, deep dives into desert past simply aren’t the forte of independent contractors turning attentions to the next Tour stop the moment they depart PGA WEST.
Perhaps the event’s future simply lies with a word, and a surname, both singular and sanguine: Hope.
