Lake Las Vegas takes next step

Golf Course News, Sep 2002 by Saunders, Doug

Owners hope third 18-hole course adds to attraction as golf destination

HENDERSON, Nev. - Lake Las Vegas Resort, the ambitious $4 billion development 17 miles south of Las Vegas, has been emerging along the shores of a 320-acre manmade lake for the past 10 years.

This massive development project already boasts two Jack Nicklaus Signature golf courses and a 425-room Hyatt Regency hotel. It takes its next big step toward becoming the premier golf destination in the Southwest this month with the opening of its second public golf course, The Falls Course designed by Tom Weiskopf.

"The Falls course is built on a very dramatic stretch of mountainside that offers over 400 feet of elevation change. Tom Weiskopf did a masterful job blending the layout into this rugged terrain and this course will be a great compliment to our Reflection Bay Golf Club which opened in 1996," said director of golf John Herndon.

The driving force behind Lake Las Vegas is a partnership of visionaries that include Transcontinental Properties of Santa Barbara, Calif., former chairman and CEO of Caesar's World Harry Gluck, and Sid and Lee Bass of Fort Worth, Texas, who own the property.

The Falls Course will join Reflection Bay Golf Club as an amenity for resort guests at Lake Las Vegas, as well as the private South Shore Club that hugs the shoreline of Lake Mead, which was created by the Hoover Dam.

The front nine of the course

flows along a descending landscape while the back nine climbs up into the mountainside, where a series of holes work through steep cliffs, and phenomenal views. The terrain is natural habitat for big-horned sheep that can be found grazing the landscape.

"The front nine was pretty straightforward to build but the back nine was a bit more difficult to create a routing as we had to swing the holes above the designated home sites. The steep elevation drops made it difficult to get heavy equipment around efficiently," Weiskopf explained.

The back nine is memorable for the stretch of holes 12 through 15. These holes climb to the highest point to provide views of both Lake Las Vegas and the city of Las Vegas to the northwest. Weiskopf created two holes with drops of over 100 feet from tee to fairway.

"These types of holes really become a leap of faith as a designer, as you are never really sure how good the golf hole is going to be until it is completely done. You can end up with a hole that either becomes too tough and controversial or a golf hole that makes players want to come back again. I think that we ended up with the latter at the Falls Course," Weiskopf said.

The $11 million course will stretch to 7,250 yards over 100 acres of maintained fairways and is planted with Tifway 2 bermudagrass fairways and tees and Crenshaw bentgrass for the greens.

The Falls Course is the third of what may become a collection of up to six golf courses to be built at Lake Las Vegas. Ground will be broken on a Fazio-designed layout this November as the developers are in full swing to create this international resort destination.

Along with the golf courses, Transcontinental Properties has teamed up with Ritz Carlton Hotels and Intrawest Corp. to built MonteLago Village, which will open next spring. This Mediterranean-style village will include a 350-room luxury hotel, 800 condominiums, a 50-acre village with cobblestone streets with commercial space, office space and a 40,000-square-foot casino