Hope Classic deals with shifts in winds

Putting on a professional golf tournament is not always a walk in the park.

For example, take the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic.

It is a staple of the PGA Tour. The Jan. 21-25 event in the desert will mark its 50th anniversary. It has a remarkable dual brand of famous comedian and fancy automobile. In its 50 years, it has given away $45 million to charities in its own Coachella Valley.

It is established, traditional. It is the event that gives Southern California golf fans a mental kick-start into the West Coast swing that goes until March and means that the Masters is right around the corner.

After all these years, it should be easy. Far from it.

First, there is its place on the PGA Tour calendar. The Hope immediately follows two events in Hawaii. Those bring out many of the bigger stars, who then tend to see the third week of the season as a good time to take a week off.

If they don’t take a week off, they can just as easily fly west to play in as many as three European Tour events, two in the United Arab Emirates and one in Qatar. At those, they can accept appearance money they cannot on the PGA Tour.

Also making that decision somewhat easier is that the Hope’s prize money, $5.1 million, is larger than only five others on the tour.

The next big reason/excuse for the big stars to go elsewhere is that the Hope remains a true pro-am event. It is played on four courses, is a five-day, 90-hole tournament rather than the usual 72 over four days, and puts amateurs alongside the pros for the first four rounds. Imagine a pro, as likely as not to bite a photographer’s head off over an ill-timed click, enduring four days of an 18-handicapper stepping in his putting line.

It probably matters little to a pro that those 385 amateurs are paying as much as $12,000 each to play, creating 60% of the Hope’s charity pot.

Hope officials know that last year’s champion, D.J. Trahan, will play. They won’t know many of the rest until the Friday before the event begins. Don’t expect to hear names such as Phil and Padraig and Ernie and Sergio; or, of course, Tiger, who has never played in the event.

Then, there was Windgate 2007.

That was the final day of the ’07 Hope, played at the new Classic Club, north of the 10 Freeway in Palm Desert and a handful of big Tiger drives away from lots of wind turbines, put there for obvious reasons.

On that day, the wind blew, spectators froze and the pros spent a miserable afternoon hitting nine-irons from 75 yards or five-irons from 225, depending on which way they were facing.

The Classic Club had been a noble experiment. The land was given to the Hope organizers by the H.N. & Frances C. Berger Foundation. At first look, it was a win-win deal. The Berger Foundation gives to charities, and the Hope tournament was a special charity. The Hope had its own place, mortgage-free, to make more money for charity.

Then the wind blew, the pros turned up their noses and PGA Commissioner Tim Finchem, according to one Hope tournament board member, “suggested strongly that we look at other places.”

The Hope and the Classic Club parted company after last year’s final day, when, incidentally, the wind didn’t blow. The official divorce, which is characterized as amicable, was finalized this week when the Hope returned the course and its inherent operational costs to the Berger Foundation, which has its main offices on the top floor of the multimillion-dollar clubhouse that had been built to be a centerpiece of the tournament.

Hope officials, who will use the Palmer Private and the Nicklaus Private Courses at PGA West, as well as nearby SilverRock and tournament staple Bermuda Dunes in the four-course rotation, will use the Palmer Private as the host course and the site of the final 18 holes for the pros. The hosts of the VIP Club off the 18th hole, a six-figure sponsorship, will be the Berger Foundation.

Finally, there is the sticky matter of the tournament’s guest celebrity. For the last two years, that was comedian and television star George Lopez, who is so passionate about golf that he calls it “the father I never had” and relishes where he came from and where the game has taken him.

“I hit lemons with a stick in my backyard and I played at St. Andrews,” Lopez says.

Lopez was invited back this year, but only as a celebrity player, and he had two answers:

“I’m not coming back.”

“I got an offer from a bigger name,” an invitation to Barack Obama’s inauguration.

Last spring, Lopez was called by a Hope official and told the tournament was “going in a different direction.”

Lopez said he signed every autograph, paid for two major parties out of his own pocket, even talked Samuel L. Jackson into redoing his filming schedule for a movie so he could play.

But the merger of Latino pool-boy jokes and elderly Palm Springs golf fans apparently didn’t work.

“I guess they didn’t like my swagger,” Lopez says. “No hard feelings. I wish them luck on their jubilee.”

This year’s guest celebrity certainly won’t be chopped liver. Arnold Palmer, who won the first Hope tournament and four others, will take over, and at least one crucial person in the mix couldn’t be happier.

Davis Sezna, president of PGA West’s operational company, says, “We’ve got the king. Arnie is my hero.”

So there is hope for 50 more years of the Hope. But in light of recent years, don’t expect it to be easy.

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bill.dwyre@latimes.com.