Longstanding SCGA member Michael Anello led a group of revelers in on- and off-course antics for decades.

Anyone with a standing game, or who regularly travels for golf with the same group of pals, knows the feeling: Friendship is intrinsic to the game. Hey, even uber-steely Ben Hogan was fond of time on the course with his amigos, if only to have the joy of beating them. But the thing is, the Hawk was out there, with friends.

Same goes for longtime SCGA member Mike Anello, who for 31 years orchestrated the Palm Desert Invitational (PDI), an annual multi-day escape to the Coachella Valley for four and eventually as many as 27 golfer revelers from Anello’s home port in La Jolla. “As much as we love golf, friendship and camaraderie are the most important and enduring bases for our PDI group,” Anello says. “Golf is simply our preferred vehicle for having fun with our pals. It’s a great excuse to take off for the weekend and everyone can participate regardless of talent level. As all golfers soon learn, the nature of the game simply lends itself to a lot of hilarity. And humility.”

He puts the PDI index range at 4 to 36.

The routine went off like clockwork each year: A Friday afternoon practice round, competitive rounds on Saturday and Sunday, and good food and ample grog spaced across it all, timed to the weekend of the pre-Super Bowl lull.

If not cutthroat, the merry fellowship did cut it up, early on bestowing on a worthy recipient the Worst-Shot-of-the-Day Award. That designation “soon became problematic,” Anello relates, “since there were so many qualifiers that it became exceedingly difficult to select a winner.” So the bar was raised and the FUBAR Award was launched. (As a family-friendly publication, that acronym will just have to stand as is.) The coveted accolade was presented in two categories: On- and off -course conduct. Read: misconduct.

As Anello explains: “There was no official definition of what type of conduct or behavior would qualify for the award, but it usually involved some sort of personal injury or some violation of accepted societal norms.”

Perhaps not Animal House in level of decorum — we are talking a retired Marine, lawyer and longtime judge [Anello] and other esteemed professionals, after all — but the boys do seem to have, umm, risen? to the occasion. Take the “School Bus Caper,” for instance, when the “headmaster of a prestigious private school” decided to “borrow” in the wee hours of the morning a dilapidated, 12-seater school bus to chauffeur the group to the desert. Or the time at an “upscale restaurant” when participants in a bachelorette party scavenger hunt needed a photo of a man’s underwear and “Steve,” a happy-to-oblige group member of Medicare age, quickly stood up, dropped trou and bent over.

On the course, FUBAR often went to someone with what can be called a swing flaw, whether nailing an innocent bystander in another group or the year a participant pulljacked a screaming rocket that penetrated the outer panel of a cart, with the ball only to be found by virtue of the sound of it rattling around inside the body of the cart.

Though dubbed the Palm Desert Invitational after starting in that city, the rounds, eats and stays started moving across the desert over time: La Quinta, Mission Hills, Indian Wells and the JW Marriott Desert Springs Resort; memorable meals at the Nest or Daily Grill. The event then morphed into what effectively was the IWI, as in the city of Indian Wells at the Indian Wells Golf Resort’s Players and Celebrity Courses, and the Grand Hyatt Indian Wells Resort & Villas.

The PDI tag remained. Anello, a 20.2 who estimates he’s been a member of the SCGA for a good four decades, is now 83, and the historic PDI tradition ended with a final installment in 2024, as “maturity,” as he calls it, intruded. With a mean age north of 80 and six members sadly going over to the great country club in the sky, the golf compadres decided to hold “Mini PDIs” quarterly at courses in and around La Jolla, and he has a weekly outing, as well. With dear friends, of course.