PGA Tour Confidential: Bob Hope Classic hosted by Arnold Palmer

Friedman: OK, then, here's the Next Big Programming Idea for Golf Channel: Celebrity Q-School.

Charlie Hanger, editor, Golf.com: In a recent column, David Feherty was pretty outraged with George Lopez's dismissal as host? Did he get a raw deal?

Alan Shipnuck, senior writer, Sports Illustrated: Lopez poured his heart into the tournament, but the bottom line is that the Palm Springs golf community is the wrong demographic for him. Rich, old white people are the butt of most of his jokes!

Michael Bamberger, senior writer, Sports Illustrated: The age of golf catering to rich old white people can't end soon enough. The Tour is really about TV eyeballs, right? And Lopez could only help get the game into zip codes that have little exposure to it. It was fascinating to read a David Feherty piece with no bits, just his defense of Lopez. That was enough to sway me that the Hope organizers made a poor choice.

Shipnuck: How about Lopez's replacement? Did anyone else catch the clip on Wed. or Thurs. when the nearly 80-year-old Palmer was signing autographs for about a dozen fans, all of them women of various ages, many of them rather foxy? He had a definite glint in his eye. They don't call him the King for nothing.

Bamberger: I love seeing Arnold Palmer in the booth. He won't be around forever, and it's great that fans who never saw Arnold make a swing in anger are still seeing the man's charm and class. It's one of the things golf does best, honor its past. I think Arnold's role at the Hope this year, minor as it was, helped make the week.

Van Sickle: Arnie told a great story about winning his first event, in Canada, and Tommy Bolt telling him to pitch out to the fairway when Palmer ploughed a tee shot into the woods. Besides being a case of illegally giving advice, Arnie ignored Bolt, threaded a 6-iron through the trees onto the green and laughed that Bolt wouldn't speak to him the rest of the round. That was a better anecdote than Nick Faldo has given in two years in the booth.

Bamberger: Speaking of Palmer: a few years ago I was with him at his casita near Palm Springs. I told him how much I admired his hard-collar golf shirts, like the ones you saw him wearing at the Hope this week. He said, "Follow me." We went to the garage, where he had maybe a thousand Pickering shirts, size large, each embroidered with the Palmer logo, the multi-colored umbrella. The company was going out of business and he bought the remaining stock. He gave me one, in Palmer pink. Sunday's winner, Pat Perez, wore a sort of modified hard collar, with pink on the shoulder blades.

Morfit: Enough about the stars. Let's talk about the golfers. Poor Steve Stricker. He is a super nice guy, and I know it was flag-bendingly windy out there, but he seems to get the driver yips. His scores on holes 6-10 (47448) equaled the zip code of Nashville, Ind. At the 2004 Players, Stricker hit the flat-out craziest-looking shot I've ever seen a player of his caliber hit: a snipe-hooked drive on 18 that went about 60-75 yards in the air before splashdown -- 50 yards left of the railroad ties.

Van Sickle: Stricker would be the first to admit he hasn't done a great job of closing on the final nine. Pat Perez, an amazing talent and virtual birdie machine, has also had issues with closing the deal. Sunday was a different story.