Las Vegas Golf Course Scene

By David P. DiFilippo

Age: 24
Height: 5’ 6”
Residence: Las Vegas, Nevada
Turned Pro: 2005
Rankings: World – 199 • 2008 Money
List – 87
Career Best Finish: 8th Place – SBS
Open February, 2008

David P. DiFilippo: How would you assess your 2008 season?
Erica Blasberg: Up and down. Probably the best golf I’ve played on TOUR but I didn’t finish as well as I would have hoped. I do feel I’m close to a breakthrough year.

Now in its 40th year of existence, the classic Las Vegas Country Club (LVCC) is a facility rich in tradition and history It holds the honor of being the oldest private course in the city.

Site of past professional (the PGA Las Vegas Invitational and the LPGAs Takefuji Classic) and top amateur events (the Nevada Women’s State Amateur Championship and the Callaway Junior Series) the club has also hosted innumerable celebrities, movers and shakers at their centrally located, off Strip venue. And that’s not to mention the rich and famous who call this original, private guard-gated community home!

In the 1950s, the land now occupied by LVCC was the site of Las Vegas Downs, a thoroughbred race track. When the racetrack went into bankruptcy, the property was purchased by an investor, Joe W. Brown, who sold it to Marvin Kratter of Nevada Equities who build the country club.

Honestly, when was the last time you were taken back by the beauty of a golf course? The first time you saw Pebble? A late afternoon round at Torrey Pines? For me, it was when I played PGA Golf Club Coyote Springs.

The Chase at PGA Golf Club Coyote Springs is a new Jack Nicklaus Signature Design – “Signature” meaning, the legendary Golden Bear actually designed the course himself. The Chase is simply awe-inspiring. PGA Golf Club’s desert locale is surrounded by magnificent mountains that seemingly change colors like a chameleon – red, orange, purple…the colors never stop. The course’s rye-grass fairways were in Augusta-like shape, a.k.a. perfect. The eleven lakes on the course are straight out of a scene from the movie The Blue Lagoon – thanks to land that is rich in minerals the water that flows out of the ground is a beautiful turquoise blue color. Add to all of that the stark natural beauty of the Southern Nevada desert and you have a breathtaking golf experience.

Created to celebrate the legacy of a great American patriot, Paul Revere, The Revere Golf Club is a revolutionary Troon Golf experience that will test your bravery, intelligence and skill, similar to the trial Revere endured during his famous “Midnight Ride.”

The Revere presents a blend of beauty and challenge unlike any other in Southern Nevada. Draped through the rugged desert canyons and valleys of the Las Vegas foothills, the golf club offers unending, awe-inspiring views of the city below and mountains beyond.

Revere Golf Club, which was recently awarded a prestigious rating of 4½ out of 5 Stars by Golf Digest and listed among its “Best Places to Play”, is home to two 18-hole championship golf courses – Lexington and Concord. The layouts are aptly named for the battles in which Revere acted so heroically and was later glorified for after his death.

How many of you out there have used the tried and tested slogan of “What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas” to justify a few bad decisions or gambling debts? I thought so. Vegas golf courses are often littered with waste bunkers and hazardous desert terrain that will eat up your allotment of golf balls as quickly as the roulette wheel will eat into your wallet. So its highly probable that those brand new Titleist Pro V1 golf balls will be staying in Vegas as well.

Rhodes Ranch Golf Club and its sister course, Tuscany, are both player-friendly golf courses with a lot of lush green fairway Don’t worry if you smack a wayward drive or shank an iron shot, chances are you’ll find it and be able to play it again. The excellent playability offered by these courses makes for a more enjoyable pace of play and a better overall golf experience.

Southern Nevada Golfers to Represent Las Vegas OB Sports Courses at OB Sports National Team Championship Finals.

National event to be held at Indian Wells Golf Resort - “Home of The LG Skins Game” September 12-14, 2008

The 14th hole of the Celebrity Course at Indian Wells Golf Resort…home of the LG Skins Game and the OB Sports National Team Championships, Presented By GPS Industries

Teams representing Aliante Golf Club, Angel Park Golf Club and The Legacy Golf Club are set to compete in the OB Sports National Team Championship, Presented by GPS Industries on Sept 12, 13, and 14, 2008 in Indian Wells, California. The two-day event will be played at Indian Wells Golf Resort’s Players Course on Saturday and on the club’s Celebrity Course on Sunday, with a practice round on either course on Friday.

The four-man scramble is one of the most enjoyable formats for team competition in golf. After all, finding one decent shot out of four is a welcome proposition to many golfers. Beginning this spring, golf clubs across the country will be able to compete in The Great American Scramble and vie for the coveted title of National Champions in Las Vegas.

After the longstanding Buick/Oldsmobile Scramble shut down in 2005, golfers were left without a national scramble competition. PGA Professional Wayne Stone decided to change that. Stone created an event aimed at bringing excitement, camaraderie and team-building experiences back to golfers through the scramble format.

Stone, who is the director of Golf at Windermere Country Club in Windermere, Fla., decided there was enough interest to create a national scramble just by gauging the response of his members to the loss of the Buick event. Encouraged by the feedback, Stone set out to create the national tournament that was currently missing from the golf world.

After years in the making, one of the West’s most anticipated golf course developments has opened its first course for daily-fee play! Located 50 minutes north of Las Vegas, PGA Golf Club Coyote Springs is the first new course to open in the Vegas area in more than six years and is certainly one of the most ambitious projects the region has ever seen. Initial development plans call for up to a dozen golf courses to be built at Coyote Springs over the next half-century and hundreds of thousands of residents relocating to this new desert sanctuary.

Coyote Springs – A Town Away, A World Apart

Golf will be a delightful centerpiece to a “new town” rising north of Las Vegas. This desert oasis will feature a variety of residential options ranging from lavish custom homes to multi-family housing plus retail shopping, commercial buildings, parks, hiking trails, schools and a full community infrastructure. In short, Coyote Springs will offer a full and complete lifestyle that will rival any master-planned community in America. 

Perhaps no other destination evokes such vivid images as Las Vegas: the flashing neon signs on The Strip, towering hotel casinos, and of course, the ever-present melody of the one-armed bandits. Although vacationers are guaranteed to run into these Vegas icons, there is no guarantee that they will be a success with Vegas’ primary pursuit – gambling.

Fair enough, but one shouldn’t have to roll the dice outside the casino, that’s why the good guys at OB Sports came up with the "Best Rate Guaranteed." If you make your golf reservation online at the official Web sites of Aliante Golf Club, Angel Park Golf Club and The Legacy Golf Club, OB Sports guarantees that you are receiving the best rate available. No guesswork, no sketchy discount sites; just go right to the source (aliantegolf.com, angelpark.com, thelegacygc.com) and book online for the peace of mind of knowing you have the best rate you can get. 

When you catch your first glimpse of the Greater Phoenix area’s newest golf course – Encanterra, A Trilogy Cauntry Club – the thing that strikes you is just how green it is. True, it’s a golf course. It’s supposed to be green. But most courses built over the past few years seem almost bashful about that fact by comparison. Not Encanterra. It just unfolds in front of you. Wave upon wave of emerald fairways accented by trees, flowers, white sand bunkers and flowing water.

Unlike many other modern private clubs, Encanterra’s membership is not limited to the residents of the community it anchors, and it is not restricted to those who reside in Phoenix year-round. Rather, Encanterra offers a variety of non-resident membership options with flexible financing (including a National Membership program that is ideal for seasonal residents), making it the ideal choice for those looking for an affordable private country club that can hold its own against the very best the Southwest has to offer.