The 2024 golf season in the Coachella Valley started as if it might lack some of the drama of 2023.
After all, defending champion Jon Rahm was not eligible to play in The American Express, choosing to join the LIV Tour rather than staying with the PGA Tour, disqualifying him from playing in the desert’s PGA Tour event. That ongoing fight between the PGA Tour and the Saudi Arabian-backed LIV Tour was causing some fans to turn away from golf entirely, and Rahm’s absence from The American Express wasn’t going to help.
As it turns out, 2024 was a remarkable year for golf in the Coachella Valley. It started with perhaps the most surprising winner in the history of The American Express and ended with golf courses not closing, but reopening, with one new track and one revived track bringing the desert back to 120 golf courses in all.
Here’s a look at the five biggest stories in the desert this year:
Nick Dunlap’s stunning win
The story is a year old now, so it might have lost its luster for some. But the idea that a 20-year-old amateur playing for the University of Alabama could come out to The American Express PGA Tour event on a sponsor’s exemption and beat a field that included names like Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele and Justin Thomas remains not just the most remarkable story in the desert in the last year, but one of the most remarkable stories in golf in 2024.
Not only did Dunlap win the tournament – though he didn’t win the money – he did it with a brilliant round of 60 in the third round at La Quinta Country Club and a 29-under-par score for 72 holes that was a record for the tournament in the four-day format.
Tournament officials say they are now getting lots of requests from younger players and amateurs hoping to be the next Nick Dunlap.
A confusing finish at Galleri
The weather might not have been perfect as it usually is in the desert, but the competition was hot at the second annual Galleri Classic at Mission Hills.
In a tight race, the event came down to Retief Goosen and Steve Alker on the 54th hole Sunday at the Dinah Shore Tournament Course. But somehow, after Goosen hit his second shot into the water around the par-5 18th green, Alker did the same thing.
Goosen was able to get up and down, while Alker couldn’t make a putt to tie, and Goosen walked away with the title. It was top players going down to the wire, but a strange finish.
Epson Tour debut
In unseasonably warm conditions, the Epson Tour brought its Tour Championship to the Coachella Valley for the first time at the Indian Wells Golf Resort the first week of October.
With temperatures edging toward 110 degrees, the golfers played 72 holes, walking the entire time, in an attempt to secure one of 15 playing cards for the LPGA Tour in 2025.
Heather Lin of Chinese Taipei won the title and clinched an LPGA card. But the long-term news is that the city of Indian Wells was able to showcase its golf resort to the LPGA, with the city hoping to bring a full LPGA event to the resort in the coming years.
More: World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, defending champion Nick Dunlap commit to 2025 American Express
Ladera opens
The first golf course to open in the Coachella Valley since 2008, this ultra-exclusive Gil Hanse-designed course is owned by music and arena mogul Irving Azoff and his friend and Apple executive Eddy Cue. With a limited membership, Ladera is an expansive course on what was once a 300-acre lemon farm in Thermal.
Most desert residents will never get a chance to play the course, but trying to attract a national membership, the layout is already getting buzz about a potential top-100 ranking. Maybe Ladera won’t change golf in the Coachella Valley, but it might change the image of the kinds of courses available in the desert.
Trilogy reopens
The narrative for golf courses in the last decade has been that they close, they don’t open. They get turned into residential houses or strip malls or business parks. That’s what makes the revival of Trilogy Golf Club at La Quinta a remarkable story.
Closed for two years and in bad shape before the revival began earlier this year, Trilogy is now open again for residents of the 55-and-older community as well as the public.
The homeowners association bought the course out of bankruptcy in part to protect their own property values, but also to give the community something to rally around. The return of Trilogy shows there is more to golf’s surge in recent years than just sold out tee times.
There were other stories as well, including the deaths of World Golf Hall of Famer and three-time U.S. Women’s Open champion Susie Berning Maxwell and desert junior golf icon Dave Shackelford. Those were sad events losing great people in the desert, but it was overall a wonderful year for golf in the Coachella Valley.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Nick Dunlap’s American Express win tops Palm Springs area golf stories
