Columnist Dean Juipe: New course puts putters on alert

Dean Juipe

Monday, July 7, 2003 | 9:13 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4084.

Bleak and tattered remnants from a previous "can't miss" idea dot the landscape.

A line of skeletal light poles ... a few sporadic palms ... some sagging fencing, intact yet seemingly kept in place by a hidden crutch. Each a visible reminder of another era, of another plan, and of the trappings of disrepair.

On a huge parcel of land that is seen by thousands of passing motorists (and tourists) every day, another sure-fire project has taken root. Opening today near the corner of Paradise and Tropicana is The Greens of Las Vegas, an 18-hole putting course that promises to matriculate into a mammoth six-course compound within the foreseeable future.

Of course, some people see the future better than others.

But plenty of people have seen this same chunk of property for the gold mine that it hasn't yet become. Same thing with a similar if slightly smaller (though perhaps even more valuable) parcel at the corner of Las Vegas Blvd. and Sahara.

Golf has been a fashionable concept on these plots, or at least on the drawing boards of those who possessed the plots. "Put something golf related there and make a fortune," any number of realtors are likely to have pitched to open-minded millionaires itching to add their identity to a desert wasteland.

The Greens of Las Vegas taps into this potential, but, as a visit to the site proved, it is looking beyond the everyday passerby. It is hawking its putting course(s) as an amenity to time-share customers who would also be welcomed at its accompanying bar and restaurant.

A busload of would-be patrons filled out paperwork and sipped bottled water while I was there.

Whether they were impressed with anything beyond the clubhouse isn't clear.

The existing 18-hole putting course is tucked in tight to the facility and bears almost no resemblance to the putting course at Angel Park, which wraps around a pond and all but requires players to bring an extra ball or two.

It's cute enough and certainly manicured to perfection, but the contoured holes are relatively straightforward and not nearly as threatening as those at Angel Park, which is downright treacherous with its ever-present watery grave.

There is definitely room for expansion, and advertisements in the newspaper promise a six-course complex at the site someday.

If those five other courses are built, they will cut into a barren area that once was part of a driving-range complex that arose and went under with little fanfare either before or after its existence. While its backers envisioned a steady procession of golfers willing to hit balls both day and night beneath the roar of the McCarran flight patterns, the project succumbed when reality took hold.

This is an expensive piece of property despite its haphazard appearance, and The Greens of Las Vegas may be little more than a nook in the ultimate developmental plans. But it is costly to put grass on a beach and it will be six times as costly if the project reaches its advertised conclusion.

Whether it's one course or six, to succeed on its own merits The Greens of Las Vegas is going to require an endless stream of famished putters.

Do those zealots exist?

I'm not so sure, and either is history.