Played in mid-winter in the Coachella Valley, it is part of the tour's early season "West Coast Swing."

For many years, the event was named for and hosted by entertainer Bob Hope and featured a number of celebrity participants.

[6] Until 2012, its format remained unique among PGA Tour events, being played over five days and four different courses.

In early 2005 a local charitable foundation gave its new course, The Classic Club in Palm Desert (an Arnold Palmer-designed track) to the tournament, making the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic the only event on the PGA Tour that owns its own facility.

In 2016, the main course was Pete Dye's PGA West Stadium Course, and also used PGA West’s Nicklaus Tournament course (originally designed for the 1991 Ryder Cup, the European Broadcasting Union objected because of the European domination of the tournament and a nine-hour time difference from Central European Time was inconvenient; the tournament moved east where only a six-hour time difference allowed the event to air in primetime hours), and La Quinta Country Club in the first three rounds.

According to the official website, those celebrities have included: The first edition in 1960 was won by Arnold Palmer at 338 (–22),[4] a record that stood for twenty years.

[4] Hope, who was possibly Hollywood's greatest golfer, added his name to the tournament in 1965,[1] and became its chairman of the board.

More recently celebrities such as Jimmy Fallon, Don Cheadle, and Samuel L. Jackson have competed in the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic, before its subsequent renames.

The tournament is the first continental stop of the calendar year, but is still a hard sell because network television coverage of the PGA Tour starts the ensuing week.

Dunlap is the only amateur to have made the cut at the event; he won the tournament by one stroke after a 2-under final round.

Beginning in 2007, the tournament lost its network coverage and the Golf Channel showed all five rounds on cable television.

Even with the move to four rounds and the reduction in celebrity involvement, the tournament is still exclusive to cable, as it is usually the last full-field stop restricted to cable-only coverage, as network television coverage of the PGA Tour currently does not begin until the week after the NFL's Conference Championship Games, which is two weeks before the Super Bowl.