Fred Couples and Johny Daly at Crosswater Club in 1999.

This summer marks the 20th anniversary of one of the most captivating golf events ever staged in Central Oregon, the likes of which has not been seen here since.

Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf, a series of made-for-television events, brought two of the biggest names in golf at the time — major championship winners Fred Couples and John Daly — to Sunriver Resort’s Crosswater Club for a head-to-head stroke-play competition.

The personable Couples, a Seattle native, was particularly popular in the Pacific Northwest. Then 39, he was seven years removed from his victory in the 1992 Masters and was perhaps a little past the prime of his career, having dealt with back issues for several years.

Daly, then 33, was a two-time major champion — winner of the 1991 PGA Championship and the 1995 British Open — but he had already established a reputation as the PGA Tour’s bad boy. His battles with alcoholism were widely known, and his behavior on the golf course was highly unpredictable. In fact, at the U.S. Open just two months before the Crosswater event, Daly had incurred a two-stroke penalty for striking his moving golf ball on the green after his putt began rolling back toward him.

He explained the meltdown by saying he did it because he did not want the United States Golf Association making him look like a fool.

Daly also had a history of pulling out of tournaments, and that was reason for concern among organizers at Sunriver Resort, which was paying $250,000 to host the “Wonderful World of Golf” event.

But Daly did show up for the duel at Crosswater, where he and Couples were greeted on the last day of August by partly cloudy skies, seasonal temperatures and an estimated 3,000 to 3,500 spectators. Organizers had expected about 2,000 at $60 per ticket.

Couples would win the day — and the $100,000 winner’s purse — covering the 7,500-yard layout with a course-record score of 4-under-par 68. Daly, a big hitter with a belly to match, wowed spectators with some massive drives and finished at 4-over 76, netting $50,000 for his effort.

Cameras and cellphones were banned from the course during the competition, part of the proprietary rights arrangement in the broadcasting deal with ESPN.

The network edited the four-plus hours of competition down to a 90-minute program, which aired twice in the ensuing weeks.

—Reporter: 541-383-0359, bbigelow@bendbulletin.com