News

The Golf Center at Palm Desert and The First Tee

Published

18 years ago

Jul 27, 2008

Do you need a place to work on your short game? Have you ever wondered where you could donate clubs you weren’t using? Did you ever feel like you wanted to volunteer your time by getting young people involved in golf? The Golf Center at Palm Desert is the place for all of this and more.

The Course

The track at The Golf Center is a nine hole par 3 that you can get through in about an hour. It’s the perfect spot to practice your short game before a full 18 at one of the bigger courses in the desert. We had the place to ourselves and really enjoyed it. The greens were actually quite challenging as the bright sun and the lay of the grass made you believe they were much faster than they actually played. We navigated the entire course with our 9 irons, pitching wedges, and putters. The 4^th hole had the longest distance of the course at 137 yards from the back of the tee box (Okay, I actually pulled out my 8 iron for this one). The shortest hole is the 9^th at 90 yards from the back of the tee box.

In addition to short game practice, this is an excellent course for beginners and children that are new to the game. The longest distance on the course using the front of the tee box is that 4^th hole at 108 yards. There are short holes at 53 and 68 yards as well.

The green fees are $10 for nine holes or $15 for 18 holes year-round. Seniors are $9 for 9 or $14 for 18 and juniors are $5 and $10. They also have year-round Mens Day every Tuesday and Ladies Day every Thursday where fees are $8 and $12. The facility also offers lessons, a driving range, and a snack bar. Fresh water and shade are strategically located throughout the course as well. You can get all details on their website <a href="http://www.cvrpd.org/programs/golf.htm">here</a>.

The First Tee

The First Tee has been around for ten years and uses the game of golf to teach children and teens life skills. What better sport than golf to learn perseverance, honesty, and integrity? The chapter in the desert just came into existence in January of 2008 with a gala opening that included the likes of entertainer George Lopez. The First Tee Coachella Valley is now well into their program rhythm and is headed by Mr. Jan Hagen, a former San Diego high school principal.

The First Tee focuses on nine core values that participants learn in addition to the game of golf; honesty, integrity, sportsmanship, respect, confidence, responsibility, perseverance, courtesy, and judgment. They also keep up with how the participants translate these skills from the course to home and school. The program in Palm Desert is open to all children and teens from ages 8-17. This chapter also has a special curriculum for even younger kids that gets them ready for the full program when they are old enough. At most, the cost per child is $100 for one year. In some cases the fees are reduced and Hagen stressed that money will never prevent a child from participation. Each participant has a set of clubs to use at the facility that suits their individual need. In order to accommodate the expenses the chapter has dedicated fundraisers and takes donations of clubs or cash. By giving your old clubs and equipment to the organization they use them in one of three ways. An older child will use the clubs as they are, a clubmaker will cut them down, or they will be liquidated to cash.

There are chapters nationwide and around the world. You can find more information on the Coachella Valley group on their website here. Find a chapter in your area on the main site here.

The back of the tee box for the first hole.

Nice shot close enough to the hole.

Each hole is marked by a bench and several have fresh water and ball cleaners.

The view between the 3rd and 4th holes

One of the water features of the course.

The First Tee donated equipment closet.

Jan Hagan, Executive Director – The First Tee Coachella Valley

News

Testing Lorem Ipsum

Published

56 mins ago

May 13, 2026

Pro Shop

What is Lorem Ipsum?

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.

Why do we use it?

It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using ‘Content here, content here’, making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for ‘lorem ipsum’ will uncover many web sites still in their infancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected humour and the like).

News

2026 PGA Championship betting odds

Published

1 day ago

May 12, 2026

Gianni Magliocco

Scottie Scheffler leads the betting ahead of the second major championship of the year, with the World Number One a +345 favorite to get his hands on a second PGA Championship.

Rory McIlroy who won the Masters back in April is a +800 shot to complete half of the calendar slam at Aronimink Golf Club this week, while Jordan Spieth can be backed at +5900 to become a career grand slam winner.

Here is the full betting board for the 2026 PGA Championship courtesy of DraftKings.

Scottie Scheffler +345 – (Check 0ut his WITB here)

Rory McIlroy +800 – (Check out his WITB here)

Jon Rahm +1300
Cameron Young +1500
Bryson DeChambeau +1700
Xander Schauffele +1850
Matt Fitzpatrick +1950
Ludvig Aberg +2000
Tommy Fleetwood +2600
Collin Morikawa +3500
Brooks Koepka +3900
Justin Rose +4300
Russell Henley +4600
Si Woo Kim +4700
Justin Thomas +4800
Robert MacIntyre +5300
Patrick Cantlay +5300
Viktor Hovland +5400
Tyrrell Hatton +5500
Jordan Spieth +5900
Sam Burns +6000
Hideki Matsuyama +6200
Adam Scott +6400
Rickie Fowler +7000
Chris Gotterup +7400
Patrick Reed +7400
Min Woo Lee +7800
Ben Griffin +8000
Sepp Straka +8400
Shane Lowry +9000
Akshay Bhatia +9200
Maverick McNealy +9200
Joaquin Niemann +9200
Jake Knapp +9200
Jason Day +9600
Kurt Kitayama +10000
J.J. Spaun +10000
Harris English +10500
Nicolai Hojgaard +11000
Gary Woodland +11000
David Puig +11000
Michael Thorbjornsen +12000
Jacob Bridgeman +12000
Keegan Bradley +12500
Corey Conners +14000
Alex Fitzpatrick +15000
Sungjae Im +15500
Sahith Theegala +15500
Harry Hall +15500
Alex Noren +16000
Thomas Detry +16500
Marco Penge +16500
Kristoffer Reitan +17000
Alex Smalley +17000
Wyndham Clark +17500
Sam Stevens +17500
Keith Mitchell +17500
Daniel Berger +18500
Ryan Gerard +20000
Nick Taylor +20000
Rasmus Hojgaard +21000
Dustin Johnson +21000
Pierceson Coody +23000
Aaron Rai +24000
Jordan Smith +24000
Angel Ayora +24000
Bud Cauley +25000
Matt McCarty +26000
Jayden Schaper +26000
Brian Harman +27000
Taylor Pendrith +27000
Ryan Fox +27000
J.T. Poston +27000
Cameron Smith +29000
Ryo Hisatsune +29000
Michael Kim +29000
Max Homa +29000
Denny McCarthy +29000
Tom McKibbin +30000
Rico Hoey +32000
Matt Wallace +32500
Ricky Castillo +33000
Haotong Li +33000
Michael Brennan +34000
Max Greyserman +36000
Stephan Jaeger +37500
Christiaan Bezuidenhout +37500
Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen +39000
Aldrich Potgieter +40000
Andrew Novak +42000
Patrick Rodgers +42500
Daniel Hillier +42500
Max McGreevy +46000
Billy Horschel +48000
Chris Kirk +48000
Ian Holt +49000
Casey Jarvis +49000
William Mouw +50000
Steven Fisk +50000
John Parry +50000
Nico Echavarria +52500
Garrick Higgo +52500
John Keefer+55000
Matthias Schmid +57500
Austin Smotherman +57500
Sami Valimaki +60000
Andrew Putnam +60000
Lucas Glover +62500
Daniel Brown +62500
Jhonattan Vegas +75000
Emiliano Grillo +80000
Mikael Lindberg +85000
Adrien Saddier +100000
Bernd Wiesberger +100000
Elvis Smylie +110000
Stewart Cink +130000
Kota Kaneko +130000
David Lipsky +150000
Chandler Blanchet +150000
Andy Sullivan +150000
Joe Highsmith +180000
Adam Schenk +200000
Travis Smyth +200000
Davis Riley +225000
Martin Kaymer +400000
Brian Campbell +400000
Padraig Harrington +450000
Kazuki Higa +450000
Jordan Gumberg +450000
Ryan Vermeer +500000
Austin Hurt +500000
Tyler Collet +500000
Timothy Wiseman +500000
Shaun Micheel +500000
Y.E. Yang +500000
Michael Block+500000
Mark Geddes+500000
Luke Donald+500000
Bryce Fisher+500000
Jimmy Walker +500000
Jason Dufner +500000
Jesse Droemer +500000
Jared Jones +500000
Garrett Sapp +500000
Francisco Bide +500000
Zach Haynes +500000
Paul McClure+500000
Derek Berg +500000
Chris Gabriele +500000
Braden Shattuck +500000
Ben Polland +500000
Ben Kern +50000

Tour Photo Galleries

Photos from the 2026 PGA Championship

Published

2 days ago

May 11, 2026

GolfWRX Staff

GolfWRX is on site for the second major of 2026: The PGA Championship from Aronimink in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania.

The tournament’s location, just outside Philadelphia, and its status as a major championship mean GolfWRXers are in for a treat: WITBs from a strong field, custom gear celebrating the PGA Championship, and the rich culture of the City of Brotherly Love — we have noted a relative absence of cheesesteak-themed items thus far this week, but most of the rest of the usual suspects are well represented.

Check out links to all our photos below.