1988 – The inspiration for today’s Dry Heat Invitational was grown out of whole cloth in 1989. At that time, there was an annual golf tournament called the SoCalPrvtUtilities (SDGE, SCE, SCG, GTE & Pac Bell). A close friend at that time, Jerry Dinsmore, coordinated the event which was usually held over Memorial Day weekend. They used mostly desert courses located in the east Los Angeles basin to the high desert. After a casual round of golf with Jerry at La Quinta Resort, I asked him why he never used any Palm Desert courses in his event. All his reasoning was wrapped around cost, utility employees being a frugal group. I immediately checked with the La Quinta pro-shop and found they were promoting summer play just to keep the courses open thru the summer. At that time, most of the 4/5 star resorts / courses were closing after the Memorial Day weekend & re-opening for Labor Day.
1989 – Our timing was perfect and the private utilities tournament was moved to Palm Desert the following June. I played as an individual in Jerry’s event thru 1988 but then started imbedding my own small group within his to help fill out his full field shotguns and take advantage of his pricing power. The Dry Heat was born, but not yet named, in the following summer with the goal of ‘Best Resorts – Best Courses – Affordable Prices’. The inaugural event was 8 players staying / playing at the Westin Mission Hills (Resort & Pete Dye Courses) within the private utilities group.
1991 – After a couple of years we grew to 16-20 players & became too large to squeeze into Jerry’s group. But, by that time, I had learned enough to do my own negotiations for lodging & green fees. It was relatively easy until the mid 90’s when the local deserts started to re-assert themselves on pricing. Early on, June thru August was more or less a dead zone & negotiating prices was usually just changing the dates on last year’s contract. By 1995 they had re-established summer lodging demand and June was priced more like May. This led me to reach out to Scottsdale, Tucson & Las Vegas and use Father’s Day weekend when possible. The rest is pretty much history.
1992 – After our 1st round at the Westin Mission Hills GR, Phil Hamilton, one of the original 8, and I were hanging out at Saturday evening’s Hospitality Suite when he came up with a clever idea. He suggested that we introduce a side competition aimed at keeping the day two interest of those who played poorly on day one. With Skins not yet established, he offered that we auction 2-person teams back to the group with the pairings based on the best / worst from Saturday’s results. Since this would essentially guarantee a level playing field and something for all to play for on Sunday, I said ‘great idea’ I’ll work it into next year’s event. No-no says Phil, we can do this right now, even considering that most of the group is 2-3 adult beverages into their evening. Long story short, he auctioned off 11 two-person teams at an average price of $90 ea. The HAMILTON HI-LO CALCUTTA has since become a cornerstone of the Dry Heat event with average team prices approaching $900 ea.
1998 – Tommy Smith shows up as a rookie from Ohio at the invitation of Ed Price. He immediately falls in love with the hosted bar in the Hospitality Suite but wonders why we don’t have a Skin’s Game. I offered that it was only because we hadn’t found someone to get it started. He said that was no longer a problem and has been handling the daily skins ever since. It took him a few years to sell the idea & get it organized (with huge support from Jeff Lewis) but it’s now SMITH SKINS, an officially sanctioned Dry Heat side event. It started as a gross only game but has evolved to a gross game at $100/day & net game at $50/day.
2014 – From the beginning we would arrange for practice rounds for those who wanted to play Friday. It started with maybe 50% of the field signing on for the practice round. By 2014 almost everyone was playing so we introduced the 2-man Best Ball. Now you can practice and have some friendly competition at the same time.