CareerBuilder Challenge: Memorable moments

Arnold Palmer broke a two-year victory drought by winning the 1973 Bob Hope Desert Classic, his fifth time taking the Southern California celebrity-fest. Palmer, 42, knocked in a 7-foot birdie putt on the final hole to top Jack Nicklaus and Johnny Miller by two shots. It was Palmer’s 62nd – and last – PGA Tour win.

The difference between David Duval’s 59 in the 1999 Bob Hope Chrysler Classic and the 59s shot previously by Al Geiberger and Chip Beck was that Duval shot his 59 in the final round. Playing on the Palmer Course at PGA West, Duval made 11 birdies and a final-hole eagle to defeat Steve Pate by one shot.

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: Johnny Miller shot a final-round 63 to win. OK, it wasn’t the U.S. Open and it wasn’t Oakmont, 1973, but it was a closing 63. It allowed Miller to successfully defend his Hope title with a three-shot win over Rik Massengale.

In 1995, then-President Bill Clinton joined former chief executives George H.W. Bush and Gerald Ford, plus host Bob Hope and defending champion Scott Hoch for the tournament’s opening round. It was the first time a sitting president had played during a PGA Tour event and believed to be the first time three presidents had ever played together.

Putter? Corey Pavin don’t need no stinkin’ putters. He holed out from 45 feet off the green on the first hole of sudden death to defeat a dazed Mark O’Meara. “I don’t know what to say,” O’Meara said. “I played what I thought was a solid round. I played 90 holes, made three bogeys and 32 birdies, set a tournament record - and I lose.” The following year Pavin would similarly victimize Fred Couples in the Honda Classic, holing a 136-yard 8-iron at the last to force a playoff that Pavin eventually won.

Of Lanny Wadkins’ 21 PGA Tour wins, he chalked up eight of them between 1982 and 1985. The sixth one in that run was the 1985 Hope, where he played the last five holes of regulation in 5 under par to tie Craig Stadler. Their sudden-death playoff went five holes before Wadkins finally won with a 20-foot birdie putt.

For the second year in a row, the Hope winner holed out in sudden death. Doing the honors (from 100 feet) in 1992 was John Cook, who defeated Gene Sauers in a playoff that originally also included Tom Kite, Mark O’Meara and Rick Fehr. Cook would win twice more that year, but the biggest prize slipped through his fingers. In the Open Championship at Muirfield he missed a 2-foot putt at the 17th that would have given him a three-shot lead. The miss helped open the door for eventual winner Nick Faldo.

One week after Justin Thomas shot 59 en route to winning the Sony Open, Adam Hadwin carded a 13-under 59 at La Quinta CC in Round 3 of the CareerBuilder. Unfortunately for Hadwin, he only managed a 70 in the final round and lost by a stroke to Hudson Swafford.

Watching the struggles of some of the amateurs has always been an integral part of the celebrity-golf experience. But it reached a new low – literally – in 1987 when the cameras captured the carnage of Speaker of the House Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill trying to get his ball onto the 16th green at PGA West. O’Neill had hit into the bunker that sits 19 feet below the green’s surface, and his efforts to escape kept coming back to him like so many vetoed spending bills. Finally, he took matters into his own hands – or rather, hand – and threw the ball up onto the green.

Tom Kite had never won a Bob Hope tournament, but he had come agonizingly close, losing in playoffs in 1982 and 1992. In 1993 he made sure there would be no playoff, shooting 325, a PGA Tour record for 90 holes, and winning by six shots. It was Kite’s next-to-last win on the PGA Tour. He would get the last one just two weeks later, taking the Nissan Los Angeles Open.