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 At least that’s the plan. “I think when you consider the four luxury hotels that we partner with, and these two new courses, which are both championship-level quality but are so completely different in style, that we can compete with any other property in the desert,” said Roger Behling, golf resort director for the city of Indian Wells. The PGA Tour thinks so, as it’s chosen the Golf Resort at Indian Wells as the latest home for the LG Skins Game this month. After the pros leave, the John Fought-designed Players Course opens for public play on November 27. The Clive Clark-designed Celebrity Course opened last November. “We chose John Fought and Clive Clark because they have such different styles,” Behling said. “John is a fan of the Donald Ross, Alistair McKenzie school, and his is more along the lines of a Riviera-style golf course, with a lot of great shot-making capabilities, larger greens, sculpted bunkers and a great deal of subtlety and nuances.” The Clark-designed Celebrity Course, which will host the Skins Game, is 300 yards shorter than Fought’s from the back tees, but a more visually stunning layout, with loads of water features and brilliant flowers. It’s definitely a course that needs a battle plan to conquer. Both courses are more than 500 yards longer, and considerably more challenging from the tips, than the original Ted Robinson, Sr.-designed layouts. The redesigns are part of a $61 million resort upgrade, which also includes a 53,000-square-foot state-of-the-art clubhouse opening early next year, and a Fought-designed practice facility and 18-hole putting course. While this is all big news in Indian Wells and the surrounding golf community, this isn’t the first time golf has dominated conversation about the exclusive enclave 15 miles southeast of Palm Springs. It’s what lured some of the priciest real estate developments in the world, along with a who’s who of the wealthy and powerful. That has included a guy who owned a farm in Gettysburg, Penn., and chose to live in the city during the winters after retiring from public service: Dwight Eisenhower. Even before the 1967 vote that made Indian Wells its own city (195 people voted for it, 16 against), golf defined the community. It began on a Friday in March 1957, when the Indian Wells Country Club was opened by part-owner Desi Arnaz and his wife Lucille Ball, along with the Indian Wells Resort Hotel. Later that year, the El Dorado Country Club opened, and for the next 20 years, nearly every home or condominium built in the city was located adjacent to one of the two courses. In 1969, when the U.S. Census Bureau tabbed it as the country’s wealthiest city per capita (932 residents and 396 swimming pools), Indian Wells’s city hall stood on a golf course and the council met in a converted clubhouse. In 1979, the city’s third private course, Desert Horizons Country Club, opened, followed two years later by Tom Fazio’s The Vintage Club, recognized by many publications as one of the top private golf facilities in the world. But it wasn’t until 1986 that you could play golf in Indian Wells and not have to pay a private club initiation fee. That’s when the Golf Resort at Indian Wells, a 36-hole complex that would eventually be flanked by four luxury hotels, debuted. It was a gamble that saved the municipality from bankruptcy. Despite its affluence and presence in a desert region swimming in wealth, the city’s aversion to any commercial development — it had no streetlights for years — forced a sobering reality-check in the late ’70s. “We brought in financial consultants and they were able to predict when our city would be bankrupt,” former Mayor Richard Oliphant told the Los Angeles Times in 1988. “What we did then was try to decide what to do and that was to go for premium destination hotels.” The centerpiece was two 18-hole golf courses, designed by Ted Robinson Sr. The plan worked. Joining the pre-existing Indian Wells Resort Hotel, the hotel known today as Hyatt Grand Champions Resort & Spa opened in 1986, followed by the Renaissance Esmeralda Resort & Spa and the Miramonte Resort & Spa. For 20 years, the courses did just fine, hosting senior PGA events and consistently ranking at or near the top of the valley’s public courses. But while they didn’t fade as quickly as a teenage crush, the golf courses didn’t have the shelf life of Twinkies. And when the city saw that it was time to refurbish the two tracks, it opted for a complete overhaul. “The courses kind of wore down over 20 years,” Behling said. “So we needed to redo our tees and green complexes. But at the same time, there was a much different style of golf course construction in the 1980s. Techniques and hole designs were different and the two courses were designed to actually blend in with each other. “That was fine when it was one of the few places in the desert that wasn’t private. But the market has greatly changed since then and we felt that to be competitive, it was time to put some money back into the facility. Our hotels are constantly upgrading their products, and now it’s our turn.” The upgrading of the courses, along with the spacious clubhouse and other on-site amenities, has resulted in an entirely new buzz about the resort, one that Behling hopes won’t stop at the California border. “Obviously this will help us with local and Southern California business, but one of the reasons we’re [hosting] the Skins Game is that we’re not just marketing to California,” Behling said. “We’re working with our hotels on a marketing campaign to take the resort’s [image] on a more global scale. That’s why we requested so much money [from the city].” SG |
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