Senior golfers delighted to be back in the Coachella Valley where they won "the Hope"

At least one group of people in the golf world are happy the LPGA decided to leave Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage after 51 years.

“I think everyone is over the moon, all the players, to be back here,” said David Duval, the 13-time PGA Tour winner and now a member of the PGA Tour Champions. “And it’s good to play courses like this, because you don’t ever see better-conditioned golf courses than this anywhere in the world this time of year. It’s just spectacular.”

Duval is one of eight golfers in the 78-player field of the inaugural Galleri Classic who have won the PGA Tour’s The American Express in the Coachella Valley. Those players are pretty representative of the rest of the field this week in expressing something close to pure delight over getting a chance to play competitive golf in the desert again.

More:Galleri Classic: Shore Course impresses in PGA Tour Champions debut

“We are just so thankful to be here. This is such a great first-year event,” said Joe Durant, the 2001 American Express winner who set a tour scoring record for 90 holes at 36-under par in the desert’s PGA Tour event. “To get to come back to Palm Springs and play, obviously, a place we all played for years on the regular tour. So to be back is great.”

What the Galleri Classic has shown so far is that fans and the players on the PGA Tour Champions have been right all along: the desert is indeed a natural fit for the senior tour.

“This is a good market for us. I think the fans remember us from back then," said 69-year-old Jay Haas, who won The American Express (he still calls it the Bob Hope) in 1988. “A lot of people in our age bracket, I guess you would say, can come out and watch. We’ve got a great field here, but any time the Champions Tour tees it up we’ve got a great field. No surprise here, either.”

The players are also excited about playing in front of galleries that have turned out to support the tournament. By Saturday, some groups were being followed by as many as 200 to 225 people, but other groups were still getting 70 or 80 fans. That's something that isn't always true at other PGA Tour Champions events and it speaks to the golf-centric nature of the desert.

For Duval, who shot easily the most famous round in The American Express history with his brilliant 59 in the final round of his 1999 desert win, being back in the desert is not so much about his 1999 win as it is about the present.

“I always enjoy being out here and playing out here. The weather tends to be fantastic,” he said. “It’s just nice to be out here. Especially with the PGA Tour Champions. The age of us players is the age of so much of the population out here.”

Haas, as is true of many 69-year-olds, has been battling a bad back that forced him to withdraw from the Hoag Classic in Newport Beach last week and had him thinking about not playing this week. But he worked to get to the first tee Friday to play his first-ever round on the Dinah Shore Tournament Course.

“This is my first time playing here. I love the golf course,” Haas said. “It is a fantastic golf course and it is in unbelievable condition. I think maybe back in the early ’80s La Quinta (Country Club) changed to a Bermuda with an early overseed on their greens, and they were the first ones to do it and we had never seen greens like that before. We have never seen greens that good before.”

So the message from some of the winners of the old Bob Hope tournament is pretty clear: they loved the Coachella Valley before and they love it as much if not more now in their 50-and-over career.

“Obviously with the regular tour still being here and then all the years of the Dinah Shore (on the LPGA), however long they were here, I’m sure it was bittersweet for them to leave,” Durant said. “They all loved playing here, obviously. But we are thankful to be able to slide in behind them and play and have good galleries, great crowds and it’s just a great setup.”

Or perhaps Haas put it best.

“There is nothing like the desert here for golf,” he said.

The rest of the players, the large galleries, the sponsors and the PGA Tour Champions officials are probably all willing to echo that this week.

Connection to The Hope

Golfers in the Galleri Classic field who also won The American Express, which was first called the Bop Hope Classic:

Corey Pavin (1987, 1991)

Jay Haas (1988)

John Cook (1992, 1997)

Fred Couples (1998)

David Duval (1999)

Joe Durant (2001)

Mike Weir (2003)

Brian Gay (2013)

Note: Golf Channel analyst Lanny Wadkins won the 1985 American Express

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Galleri Classic: Hope winners from the 1980s to 2010s back in the desert