Thanks for the suggestion. I played Wolf Creek earlier this year and it was great.

Next week playing Royal Links (twice), Desert Pines, and TPC Las Vegas. I played Desert Pines about twelve years ago and remember enjoying it other than it was a bit tight and in the middle of the barrio. Still, it was a nice change from standard desert golf and they clearly moved a lot of dirt and made good use of water hazards. Plus it was close by. I expect the other two courses to also be OK but not great tracks. Mostly I'm concerned about their condition this time of year, and if they are in the tier I think they are am concerned they'll be pretty ragged. Will read this thread for reviews and report back with my own!

EDIT: I should add this is for a group event / tournament so the courses are set in stone.

I also like Desert Pines Tight course but like you said nice layout. Still have this bad memory of a dog crossing the faorway with three Hyperdermic needles sticking out of it.

Yeah, read that bit about the dog...not really sure what to think about that.

Seems to be generally positive stuff about TPC Las Vegas and very mixed opinions on Royal Links. Because I tend to feel more at home with courses I know I'm doing some google maps and website research on these courses so I have some idea of what's awaiting me!

i played royal links last sunday. really is like a links course, pot bunkers and crazy deep rough. there were like 6 occasions when my group saw right where the ball went in the weeds and we still couldn't find it.

on the short par 3 one of the greenside bunkers appears to be about 9 feet deep. the road hole replica was pretty cool, and that hole has a very deep bunker too.

whats the best value course if i need to rent clubs aswell ?
Would love to play a somewhat desert course as I´ll never find this in europe (where im from).
What would you play (have only 1 day for Golf, need to rent clubs and dont want to spent more than 150 $ total)?

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I would look for Badlands on there for $50 than a cab ride of $50 each way and rentals for $50.
Anywhere you play Rentals may cost you $50 but youll get nice clubs

http://www.badlandsgc.com/index.php

Quick observations three days in:

Royal Links: really like this course, and the general consensus among those on the trip is very positive. HOWEVER, little did we know until we set foot on it Saturday morning that they punched the greens a week ago. So Saturday it was like putting on Plink-O, although today was noticeably better albeit quite a ways from good. Because our outing has quite a few hacks in it we played one tee up both rounds. Would really like to try this course from the tips to gauge the challenge. As it was I had nine birdies in two rounds, with a big asterisk in that the 9th and 18th holes are essentially long-ish par-4s from the one up tees and I had three of my birdies on those two, and completely pissed away another. Holes 8 and 10 will get all the press, but 12 and 16 are really solid par-4s, and I imagine 17 is a beast from the back.

Desert Pines: this course is just really short, but we knew this already. They clearly have some Enron-esque accounting going on with their yardage because some holes are marked for distances where no tees exist, so it's probably about ~200 yards shorter from the back tees than the card indicates. Because it is short we were supposed to play the tips but there was some miscommunication and we played one up, and as a result I hit an iron off the tee on all but three of the par-4s, the exception being the reachable ones, and I reached on all three (two of them with a 3-wood). Nonetheless the greens were outstanding, just astonishingly good. And of course there are a fair number of interesting holes. So much better were the greens that we took a vote at the end of the round whether to go back there today instead of Royal Links and it narrowly lost (I voted to play it again).

Played TPC Las Vegas (nee Canyons) today. Not sure what to think, pretty sure I liked it but we played it so short ("blended", so 6300 yards or so to accommodate the chops in our group) that I have no clue how tough it is from the tips. To be fair, a lot of the blue tees on blended were just a few yards from the back but those were usually the shorter holes. A lot of interesting holes, a little narrow in spots, subtle green complexes which were hard to read but not overly difficult.

As is often the case I am uncomfortable on courses I've never played before and never really settled into a groove, complicated by the fact that there were a lot of final day bets pending and I hadn't really had a stinker of a round yet so was bracing to lay an egg. Made a total AIDS double bogey on the short par-3 second hole and never really anything going, although I did par nine out of the last ten holes. I HIGHLY recommend that anyone playing for the first time splurge for a $5 yardage guide, it was extremely useful given the number of blind shots and the holes which bottleneck at a certain distance. By no means is the course laid out in front of you, there are plenty of surprises.

All in all a good trip and the courses were better than I expected. Would happily play the same rota next year.

Great trip report Tuq. Of thge three I liked TPC the best and you are right the yardage book is worth every penny. Never played Royal Links as I find the Walters group not the best courses. Though they no longer own the course I had played. Though Desert Pines was in great shape. May I ask what you paid for each round and eraly or late tee times?

Unfortunately I don't know what we paid other than the $60 for the first round at Royal Links on Saturday. The rest were all part of the entry fee. There was a lot of grumbling about the $60 rate because of the recently aerated greens but meh, it was a Saturday morning and a similar course in Phoenix would cost about the same amount this time of year.

The courses are all so different from each other stylistically that I'm not sure I could ever get rankings to congeal. TPC has the best piece of land in the best neighborhood with the best resume. Desert Pines has the least amount of land in the worst part of town but gets a lot of credit for being a fun layout and having superb greens. It's a real gem in the barrio. Royal Links falls in the middle, the land is more than sufficient but it can be a bit redundant and the condition was just OK. Plus it's sandwiched between a trailer park and a water treatment facility so the scenery isn't great.

TPC is just such a different course from the real blue tees or the tips (for instance that "short" par 3 second hole is more like 190 dead over the canyon on a bit of an angle into that big green) and the third hole tee shot has to carry about 210 and is pretty intimidating. I played it from the blend the first time and was like "meh, seems pretty easy" then I played it from the blues on their full length set up and was like "oh"

Just got Primm 36 holes for $49 Voucher good till August 30th. Played the lakes course but not the desert.

Heading out Aug 20 th should be nice and cool than

Played Cascata this weekend as part of the Donald Driver Celebrity Tournament to raise money for his foundation. Not much to say about the course other than awesome. Fairways were perfect, greens were perfect. Reading the greens can be a bit tricky although since each group has an experienced caddie with them it's kind of a moot point.

Would I pay the rack rate to play there again? No. Would I play there for free as this venture was? In a heartbeat.

BO

How'd you guys do? Looking at the entry sheet, it looks like you could have a foursome AND still get paired with a 'celebrity friend of Donald Driver'. Is that how it worked? Any good stories? Like Brett showing up drunk in his Wrangler jeans telling people he's thinking of a comeback while sending indecent pictures to Donald's wife... you know... that sort've thing.

No great stories, this is the third straight year I've played in it. Haven't seen Favre at all. Two years ago I watched an NBA Finals game in a suite with about 15 NFL players who were extremely into the game.

A good friend of mine lives across the street from Driver here in the Dallas area and has entered a couple of teams the last few years. The first year we played with Marion Barber, this year we played with Akin Ayodele and Linda Cohn was in front of us. Two years ago one of the celebs was Aaron Rodgers, for some reason after he was Super Bowl MVP, he hasn't been there the last two years!

I will say this, the first year I played it was held down in Houston. The first time I saw Driver he was shuttling people from the airport to the hotel in a big white van. The second time I saw him he was carrying cases of beverage up to the hospitality suite. In short, he was doing a lot of the heavy lifting that comes along with an event like this. He wasn't just standing around letting others take care of it. He was extremely hands on and that's great to see from a star athlete in this day and age.

BO

Interestingly enough given recent discussion, I happened to play Desert Pines for the first time last weekend and really enjoyed it. Only knock is how tight it can be, but was a cool layout, great greens, very playable and fun.

Nice to hear. Always seemed like a very likeable guy. Plus, he helped me to a couple of fantasy football championships through the years, so tell him I said 'Thanks' the next time you see him!

Yeah, he just seems like an all-around good dude. He has zero arrogance about him. Have met his wife and kids and they seem just as nice, kids very well-behaved.

Something else that was really cool the first year, we were introduced the first night in the hospitality suite and chatted for 5-10 minutes or so with a few others. So two days later I'm in the hotel lobby by myself when Donald comes out of the elevator. Walks over to me and calls me by name! I was flabbergasted.

From everything I've seen, he's a better person than he is a football player, and that's saying something. I don't get awestruck over famous people, but he's just got his head screwed on straight.

BO

Man you are so cool

How does Driver hit his driver?

See, this is why your posts are worthless. Somebody wanted some details about this event and I gave a few. It was fun to play in the event and awesome to play a course as great as Cascata. And for no reason you just jump in with a troll post.

I'll make you a deal, you stop trolling my posts and I won't make you look like an idiot.

BO

Ha! The hole he played with us he hit a fairly long 15-yard cut right down the middle. Pretty good swing, obvious slice move but a nice athletic one.

BO

Clark, there is a pretty amazing dichotomy between the amount of land and neighborhood that Desert Pines is in* and the course itself. They really made the most out of what they have.

* I was pretty sure it was pure ghetto between the course and the strip but we were starving after the round so hit a Subway at Eastern/Sahara. We had barely stepped out of the car when a couple of cracked-out hos solicited us. Suffice it to say we got our food to go. Didn't strike us as the part of town to linger in unless we wanted to get drugs or dead, and we were in the market for neither.

nitBO, interesting stuff about Driver.

5+ rounds in Vegas this week. Here its nice and cool this week Bear's Best closed rats

Badlands
Revere Concord
Revere Lexington
Primm Desert
Tuscany