Timing is everything in golf, including a made-for-TV, match-play event like the 2000 Battle at BIGHORN. Only a year earlier, Tiger Woods edged Sergio Garcia by one stroke to win the PGA Championship, igniting a vivid if short-lived rivalry between the young stars. That passion overflowed to the Canyons Course at BIGHORN the following August, with a match between the two garnering tremendous local and international attention as well as notable television ratings.
“We opened the gates at 2 p.m. with the match starting at 5,” recalls BIGHORN General Manager Tony Ogrodnick. “Right at 2, the cars started streaming in through the gate and into the parking area, and there was a line of cars all the way to Haystack Road! They never stopped coming for about three hours. It was awesome. We filled the parking lot and used 22 homesites for overflow. More than 5,000 people showed up that day. The community just loved it.”
Garcia edged Woods 1-up under lights installed for the occasion in the first of three Battle at BIGHORN events, followed in 2001 when Woods teamed with Annika Sörenstam to face David Duval and Karrie Webb. In the final edition, in July 2002, Woods and Jack Nicklaus defeated Lee Trevino and Sergio Garcia.
The par 3 hole No. 17 on the Arthur Hills–designed Mountains Course.
“It’s very difficult to beat those guys, but I loved it,” Trevino recalls. “Second place was fine. I won the U.S. Open in 1968 and 1971, and first prize each time was $30,000. For second place at BIGHORN, we each got $200,000. That will buy a lot of tacos!”
The Battles were bookended by other televised events at BIGHORN. The Skins Game was played on the Mountains Course from 1992 through 1995, while Hale Irwin won the 1998 Senior Match Play Challenge. The LPGA Samsung World Championship took place from 2004 through 2007.
“Those Battles at BIGHORN were very purposeful and really put the community on the map nationally,” Ogrodnick says. “There was a ton of real estate sold — an estimated $38 million worth — after the first one. Because of Tiger and Sergio, you knew it was going to be a home run.”
Trevino knows who gets the credit for that. “[Late BIGHORN Chairman] R.D. Hubbard was the man out front with that idea,” he says of the events shown in prime time on the East Coast. “That was the original. They copied him after that.”
No Place Better
Lee and Claudia Trevino come to BIGHORN as often as possible and never want to leave.
Whenever Lee Trevino meets a potential BIGHORN Golf Club Member, he gets straight to the point. “I’ll ask them, ‘Are you looking?’ The usual response is, ‘Yes, we’re just looking.’”
“Have you looked at other places?” he’ll ask next. “We have,” they’ll reply.
“Well, you’re wasting your time,” he then tells them. “As soon as you look at this place, you’re going to say, ‘What the hell were we doing looking at other places?’ I’m sincere about that. There’s nothing even close to BIGHORN.”
That is high praise from the 84-year-old Texas native and BIGHORN Member for more than 20 years. Trevino accumulated 92 wins (including six majors) during a legendary career and was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1981.
A winning couple on and off the course, Lee and Claudia Trevino always come home to BIGHORN for the annual Welcome Home Party.
“I have traveled all over the world, played just about every place you can imagine, and stayed at all the different resorts and hotels,” Trevino says. “For people looking for the best club to join, I don’t know of any that I have ever been to that’s even close to BIGHORN. It is different. It’s like a family. As soon as you join, you start meeting everyone. And everyone meets at the Canyons Steak House. Everyone congregates there at night, so they get to know each other.”
Trevino and his wife Claudia rarely leave the property during their visits to Palm Desert. “We have everything we need on the campus,” he says. “Where have you ever heard of 36 holes with two major restaurants, two driving ranges, and a marketplace for food, coffee, wine, and fresh bread? The Golf House is where the ladies tend to congregate for lunch. It’s the most family-oriented club I have ever seen. And if you have an exotic car, you take it to The Vault! It’s the most amazing thing.”
A golfer at his core, Trevino spends most of his time at either the practice range or one of the two courses. “The whole thing about golf clubs, and you see this all the time, is you don’t have anybody to play with,” he says. “Not so at BIGHORN. We have games at eight and 10 in the morning. You bet a little bit, play with your handicap, and then most of them have lunch. It’s fabulous.”
Trevino’s favorite lunch partner, naturally, is Claudia. “I go and get her after the morning golf and we get something to eat,” he says. “Then we go to the range to hit balls and play nine holes, usually finishing around 3 p.m. We’re a team now for 40 years. I don’t go anywhere without her. I’d get lost if I did.”
They are a successful team on the course, too. At BIGHORN’s 2014 One-Day Member-Member Golf Tournament, the couple’s score of 66 tied for first place with BIGHORN Member and 20-time Champions Tour winner Jim Colbert and Robbie Pike Jr. More amazingly, Mr. Trevino won three of the four closest to the pin contests that day. The other winner? Mrs. Trevino herself.
The Trevinos come to BIGHORN from their Dallas home as often as possible, including each November for the Welcome Home Party. “What other club can feed hundreds of people on a patio? I don’t know of any,” Trevino says incredulously, referring to the Event Terrace at the Clubhouse. “And have you ever seen anything as gorgeous as the dining room [at The Pour House], looking down the 18th fairway of the Mountains Course and down into the Coachella Valley? It doesn’t get any better than that.”
This story was originally published in the 2025 edition of BIGHORN magazine.
