Hope to Get New Courses

The 45-year-old Bob Hope Chrysler Classic will get a face-lift in 2006 when three new courses will come into play, two of them designed by Arnold Palmer.

After announcing last month that Indian Wells Country Club was being dropped from the Hope rotation, beginning next year, tournament officials said Tuesday that in 2006 they would add the SilverRock Ranch in La Quinta and an as-yet-unnamed course north of Interstate 10 at Cook Street near Palm Desert that is owned by the H.N. & Frances C. Berger Foundation of Palm Desert.

Palmer’s design company is the course architect for both layouts, which are under construction. They are expected to be in play by early next year.

According to John Foster, a member of the executive board of the Hope tournament, SilverRock Ranch and the Berger property course will alternate as hosts of the tournament, which began in 1960 as the Palm Springs Golf Classic and is played over four courses.

“For years, we’ve been looking at the future and how we were going to approach it,” Foster said. “This is a big change, but it is a change that will last for decades into the future.”

Foster said the Hope tournament had a 40-year agreement to stage the event at the Berger property and a 15-year deal with the city of La Quinta and mutual options for another 15 years for SilverRock.

Formal approval for what would be the Hope’s third new venue for 2006, a Jack Nicklaus-designed layout at Indian Wells called Toscana, is expected this week. Representatives of Toscana and the Hope tournament are scheduled to meet with city officials Thursday night in a closed-door session of the Indian Wells City Council, according to the agenda on the city’s website.

Neither the SilverRock course nor the Berger property course is being built around housing developments, although there will be home sites at Toscana. The SilverRock course, owned by the city of La Quinta, will measure 7,570 yards from the back tees, and the Berger property course will play at 7,627 yards at its longest.

The Berger Foundation is active in the Coachella Valley and has been a benefactor of the Eisenhower Medical Center, the McCallum Theater Foundation and Cal State San Bernardino.

The future of the current Hope venues is uncertain. Tamarisk, which will be played next year, is certain to be dropped, which leaves the fourth course for 2006 to be chosen from among La Quinta Country Club, Bermuda Dunes Country Club and the Palmer Course at PGA West.

Indian Wells, Bermuda Dunes and Tamarisk were played in the first year of the tournament in 1960, and Indian Wells has been played every year.

If the Palmer Course at PGA West stays in the rotation for 2006, no course played in the Hope tournament before 1988 will remain.

Foster said that the PGA Tour had urged tournament officials to move to new courses. He added that the new co-host courses would be more fan-friendly because of on-site parking, picnic areas and better sight lines, and that the tournament’s contributions to charity probably would increase.

“We’re looking at this as the home of the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic for the next generation or two,” Foster said.

Chrysler, which became the title sponsor in 1986, has a contract with the tournament through 2006.

The tournament operates as a nonprofit venture and has an agreement with the Hope family to use the name and likeness of the comedian, who died in 2003, as long as it remains a charity event.

Phil Mickelson won in January when PGA West was the host course for the $4.5-million tournament, which will remain a 90-hole pro-am event.