Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Commentary: New course today is only dust, dreams

THE GOLF COURSE has less than a year to get ready and right now there's not a single blade of grass on it. Sort of makes you wonder why the Las Vegas Senior Classic would even be considering a move from the TPC at Summerlin to across the street and the under-construction TPC at The Canyons.

But there is a reason, of course, and it has to do with money. Making money.

Plots -- and later homes -- can be sold for infinitely more money when the buyer is told he or she can live not only on a golf course, but on a golf course that's going to host a professional event like the PGA Senior Tour's Las Vegas Senior Classic.

"No doubt about it," tournament manager Charlie Baron said. "Along the same lines, why is the Lake at Las Vegas going to host the Wendy's Three-Tour Challenge this fall? It's exposure. It's a way to sell lots. The salesman still has to sell the lot, but this way the buyer is at least aware of it."

But isn't there such a thing as rushing it?

The TPC at The Canyons has been plotted and had Senior Tour pro Ray Floyd in this past week to contribute his two cents as a consultant, yet it remains lifeless ground today. The first grass seed will be distributed later this week or maybe next week, Baron said Sunday.

"If it's not ready, we won't go," he added. "It may take more than a year to get it into tournament condition. If there's any problem, either we'll determine or the tour's agronomist will determine that we'll have to wait another year."

Apparently the idea of a second TPC course was always in the Summerlin master plan. And that second course was always going to get the Senior Tour event, with the PGA Tour's Las Vegas Invitational remaining at the TPC at Summerlin.

"The golf courses are a way of selling the community," Baron said.

Also coming: a hotel resort that will utilize The Canyons.

The Senior Tour players seem like a pawn in all of this, getting bumped from one newly constructed course to another simply so some developer can make millions. When Jim Colbert won Sunday's tournament in a four-hole playoff, it marked only the third year the TPC at Summerlin had hosted the event. And as beautiful as that course is, the players realized -- and commented -- that even it hasn't fully grown in. Colbert himself in his post-round interview remarked on how the greens haven't yet reached maturity.

And now the players are going to be asked -- told? -- to move across the street to an area that when they saw it this past week was nothing more than dust and dreams.

"This all started in Palm Springs," Baron said. "They started putting golf courses there with all the housing developments and they found that golf sold Palm Springs.

"But we think if the weather cooperates the new course will be OK by next spring. If it's not, we won't ask the tour to play on dirt or a parking lot."

That said, smart and influential men want that course to be ready and expect it to be ready even if it isn't yet anywhere near ready.

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