Thursday, Jun. 18, 2009
PGA West Stadium Course
La Quinta, Calif.
Palm Desert has long been a refuge for Los Angeles' élite. Rest and relaxation are not what designer Pete Dye had in mind when he introduced what he called his "grenade-attack look" — a course pockmarked by moguls, swales and bunkers so imposing that one of the bunkers earned the nickname "the San Andreas Fault." After staging the PGA Tour's Bob Hope Desert Chrysler Classic for many years, the course was dropped in 1988 after professionals complained that it was too difficult. As the great sportswriter Jim Murray put it, "It's either the toughest golf course in the world or the easiest slave-labor camp."