The $1,000 Round of Golf

Before folks in Las Vegas offered up the $1,000 round of golf, I refused to be sucked in by any suggestion that this might be a place to tee it up. Before the $1,000 round, I relegated any notion that this might be a “golf destination” to the same dark corner as that “family destination” nonsense. As in: Sorry Siegfried. Sorry Roy. Good try, but I ain’t joinin’ you in no foursome no time soon. This place is about greed, not greens; suckers, not swings; hustlers, not handicaps; blackjack, not bogeys . . . . That’s what we like about the place.

No, in my mind, if the fair game was going to be associated with this unfair town, I’d just as soon cling to the image from the old days at the Las Vegas Country Club, where an FBI surveillance plane landed on the 17th fairway while snooping on Lefty Rosenthal, or where Jay Sarno, who built Caesars Palace and Circus Circus with a little backing from the Teamsters, waited out the verdict of his trial (something about offering a “gratuity” to an IRS agent) wagering with his lawyer on the putting green. Now that was Vegas golf.

Then they started building a slew of courses in the ‘80s after Atlantic City made rumblings about being, heaven forbid, a rival. Next came the buzz a few years back when Steve Wynn, the casino mogul who helped bring about this new Vegas--the one built around hotels-as-theme parks--gave a leading golf architect a blank check to transform a chunk of Godforsaken desert.

Some golf gurus quickly declared Wynn’s creation, Shadow Creek, among the top 100, 50--perhaps even the top 10--courses in the world. But who knew for sure? The only people allowed to play it were his celebrity buddies and the highest rollers at his hotels--the sort of blokes who get private baccarat tables. They wouldn’t even let the press sample it, saying they wanted to “maintain the mystique.”

Mystique? You couldn’t help but wonder whether you’d arrive at the 17th hole and find a huge fake volcano, like at Wynn’s

Mirage hotel. Or chrome-bedecked golf carts--like Rodney Dangerfield might have driven in “Caddyshack”--with slot machines built in. Rumored to have cost $43 million, how could Shadow Creek be anything but a giant parody of a Goofy Golf miniature golf course?

Then, this summer, Wynn announced, in essence, “You wanna see it? Come on.” He was opening up his course. Taking it public. With one catch: Shadow Creek would be the most expensive round of golf known to man.

Oh, your $1,000 also would get you a suite at the Mirage, a limo to the course and--once there--a caddy. But that begged some questions. For $1,000, would they throw in a fruit basket, perhaps with a package of Steve Wynn golf balls amid the plums and bananas? What kind of caddy would you get--a sequined showgirl? And what on earth would you tip that caddy atop a $1,000 greens fee? How many other palms would have to be greased?

All of which raised the final obvious question: How could it possibly be worth it, a round of golf costing more than three times the $295 charged to play the undisputed shrine to the game, Pebble Beach?

So I had to check it out--not only Shadow Creek but the whole Vegas golf scene as well.

*

I take a Thursday morning flight from L.A., pick a rental car with ample trunk room (namely for my oversized “old man’s” putter) and head for the logical starting point, the Desert Inn--the last place where you can tee up right on The Strip.

The Desert Inn is a trip back in time--one hotel here that’s not become an exotic zoo, mall or mini-Disneyland. With 700 rooms, it’s cozy in comparison to the new 5,000-room monoliths. Its course, in turn, dates to 1952, when golf was entering its postwar boom as a sport suitable for more than the super-rich. A year later, the DI began hosting an annual Tournament of Champions for the winners of all the Professional Golfers Assn. competitions. Then television discovered golf. So decades before made-for-TV events like the Skins Game would be used to give visibility to new resorts and real-estate developments, this place understood the promotional potential of golf. Most tournaments were on exclusive private clubs. Here you could watch on the tube as Arnie (three times) or Jack (two times) captured the crown, then use your vacation to play the same holes yourself.

Arriving before check-in time for rooms, I go directly to the pro shop. Its location--a chip shot from the spa, lagoon-like pool and tennis courts--suggests the something-for-everyone resorts common to Palm Springs. But that’s an anomaly here, since two other Strip courses, the Tropicana and the Dunes, were bulldozed for hotels.

At the DI, guests are invited to reserve tee times a year ahead, and for prime morning hours, advance planning is wise. An L.A. plastic surgeon recently made that discovery that when he had to call course after course seeking space for 12 players coming to town for a bachelor party. It would be easier to get the proverbial stripper for their party, he decided, than tee times for such a group.

Coming alone on a 100-degree afternoon, though, I have no trouble getting on. Indeed, an assistant pro behind the counter says I’ll be paired with only one other player, a Mr. Underwood, who is warming up on the lush grass driving range. And when I ride over in my cart, Underwood wonders if we should each play alone. He shoots about 100, he explains, and is worried I might be too good. I’d been a college player, but I reassure him that I’m mostly into tennis these days and just re-injured a knee, so, essentially, I would be hitting off one leg. After watching me half-swing lame practice shots, he says OK.

But what’s up with him? Signs on the range ask players not to practice longer wood shots, which might carry over a fence. Underwood nonetheless slashes at balls with his driver. “For what I’m paying,” he says, “no one’s going to tell me not to hit my driver.”

It’s not cheap. Coinciding with a $200-million overhaul of the Desert Inn, greens fees for outsiders recently were upped to $215. Guests at the hotel pay $120 during the week, $145 on weekends.

Later, when I ask the head pro about the fees, he says simply: “It’s what the market will bear.” So one thing I quickly decide about Vegas golf is to suspend the comparison game, as in: “For less than that, I could be playing Spanish Bay,” on the Monterey Peninsula, where several holes virtually disappear into the ocean. You go there to worship the game. Here, you remind yourself, you’re coming first for the casinos.

Oh, the course. It’s pretty good. Excellent greens. Reasonably challenging. And it, too, is like a trip back in time.

In 1952, it was a novelty to create--in the desert--a tournament-caliber layout with towering palms and willows and lots of water hazards. Before sensitivity to environmental “habitat,” there was no thought of making anything look natural, certainly not the water--dyed blue-green--or the boulders carted in as landscaping.

By today’s standards, the course is unthinkably flat. The style of recent years is “target golf,” with fairways that are plateaus running precariously through plunging hazards until you reach greens elevated high above, requiring careful, lofted shots. To golfers reared on such courses, the Desert Inn will be a strange, less exotic experience.

There is one Cyber Age touch--color computer monitors in the carts that instantly calculate how far you are from the pin. But you have to take your eye off the ball, and the course, to revel in the real novelty, which is the location: The holes wind past the backyard pools of ‘50s-style homes that once were among the town’s finest, and, at the same time, the hotel-casinos of modern Vegas loom above you. On one hole, you hit right at the Stratosphere’s needle-like, roller-coaster-topped tower.

If the course is a mix of nouveau and retro, so is my partner. Underwood is here for one of the reasons Vegas has survived competition from coast-to-coast gambling--a convention. “The shoe show,” he informs me. The creative director of a New York advertising agency, he’s giving a speech in a few hours on the marketing of a new boot. So he’s rushing to finish--in a style that might have fit nicely into Bugsy Siegel’s Vegas.

Underwood grows agitated when we’re slowed by a threesome ahead. He announces that we should “play through” and drives his cart to the green, where they’re putting. Then he drives back to me and reports they are “mildly receptive” and that I should “hit up.”

In fact, I discover, these dudes are mildly enraged about Mr. U.’s request. When I reach the scene, one is calling Underwood a “@#$%&*!,” and he responds, “Don’t you know anything about #%@#* golf courtesy?”

But they let us play through. And with the threesome glaring like a would-be lynch mob, Underwood hits his shot of the day--an iron right on the green of the DI’s “signature” hole, No. 7, a par 3 over water.

As we drive off, I shrug an apology to the trio. The confrontation, though, seems to have gotten my own juices flowing. Worried about my knee, I had flubbed my first drive and never found a rhythm. Now I begin grooving approach shots to the point where I have four short birdie putts on the back nine. I miss ‘em all--that big putter is letting me down--but it’s a start at getting tuned up for my $1,000 round, three days away.

Underwood is staying at the Mirage, yet has no thought of playing Wynn’s course. “Don’t get me wrong, I can afford it,” he says. “I’m just not sure that’s a good investment.”

A golf round an investment? I ask what he’d tip the caddy were he to play Shadow Creek. “Gotta be $100,” he says. “If you share him with someone, maybe $50 each. Otherwise you gotta give him $100.”

We shake hands at the 18th green, and I head off to check into my room. I pass through the casino but resist playing. Better save my money.

*

A craps table is still going the next morning when I head out at 5 a.m. to start Phase 2 of the Vegas golf tour: sampling the modern resort courses. My destination is the Paiute Indian reservation 20 miles north, where two courses have opened and two more are planned. No hotels or condos yet--just high-level golf in a barren valley ringed by mountains.

A good resort course gives visitors an experience a notch up from their local public facility--for a price several notches up. The essentials include classy practice areas (no hard mats and rubber tees), country-club-like service--polite young men scurrying to pick up your clubs, clean them and put them on carts--and, on the course, manicured conditions and distinct designs.

The Paiute courses were designed by Pete Dye, who made his name along the Southeast coast by creating gems such as Harbour Town Golf Links on Hilton Head Island, S.C. His trademark is intimidation of the golfer, accomplished by requiring long carries--over water or wasteland--and sand traps that have walls fortified with railroad ties. You can count on his 18th hole being brutal, its green tucked behind a lake.

You find all of that at both courses here, as they wind through terrain maintained as desert habitat, with “rough” featuring tangled brush, cactuses and red and yellow wildflowers. Still, these courses are much less difficult than Dye’s notorious layouts, like the PGA West Stadium Course outside Palm Springs. The fairways here are “friendly,” meaning wide. Don’t get me wrong--duffers will suffer and low-handicappers will face challenges, especially when winds whip. But the people behind resort golf don’t want you hacking around for six hours. The goal is speedy play, so you can enjoy the round and get on with your day.

I pull into the parking lot here at 5:40 a.m., behind a cab depositing four Japanese men from a Strip hotel. But the lot fills mostly with the rental cars of the Dockers crowd, the sort of young men who have fueled the current golf boom--and also brought cigars back into vogue.

Playing the Sun Mountain course (Tav-ai Kaiv to Paiutes), I, however, am paired, with a very non-Yuppie local, Joe, who is practicing because a friend has invited him to play in an insurance group’s tournament here. Joe is normally a bowler and works at the Mirage--as a baker. He tells me the hotel has 43 bakers, and none that he knows has golfed at Shadow Creek. “Sometimes [hotel] supervisors get to play, but it’s really for select people,” he says.

When I report that I’m to play there Sunday, he adds, “Maybe you’ll run into Michael Jordan. You could probably take him for a few bucks.”

I appreciate his confidence, but while I’m playing OK, making lots of pars, my knee remains weak, my drives short and that putter still won’t cooperate.

For the second day, I don’t sink a single birdie putt and have to settle for a 77. So I don’t know if I’m ready to take on MJ, even if he’s not the best golf gambler (didn’t he once lose $1.2 million?).

After we complete the 18, I plunk $20 into the video slots built into the lunch counter of the small, temporary clubhouse. Before I finish an iced tea and sandwich, the first wager of my trip proves a wipeout.

*

The next day, I again leave the strip at dawn, this time driving southwest to the California border, 40 miles away, to what used to be Stateline but last year was renamed Primm after casino owner Gary Primm, one of whose places, Whiskey Pete’s, displays the “Bonnie & Clyde Death Car.” He’s also behind the Primm Valley Golf Club, whose Lakes Course opened last February and Desert Course debuts in December. Both were designed by the man who did Shadow Creek, Florida-based Tom Fazio. But when I chat with the pro, he begs off comparisons. “I don’t want people to think of us as a Shadow Creek wannabe,” he says. “We’re a resort course.”

As at the Paiute courses, he means, this place has broad landing areas so players can complete 18 holes almost before their families wake up back at the hotel. Like the Dye courses, though, it provides a scenic sampling of a top designer’s work, showcasing Fazio’s rolling fairways and gaping sand traps. He doesn’t clutter up his holes with too many, but they’re huge--and placed just where you want to hit.

In fact, my partner this round, Tom, keeps urging me to abandon caution and hit over such hazards. He doesn’t want to hear about my knee. “Come on,” he says, “you can do it.” So I try--and start pumping the ball.

Tom is staying in Primm as a break while driving from Orange County to Vegas for a men’s clothing show. He markets T-shirts decorated with Winnie the Pooh scenes. On the course, he likes to light up a cigar and fish . . . for balls. Each time we pass a creek, he pokes around it with a long scoop. He claims to have once retrieved 102 during a round.

When he hears I’m playing Shadow Creek, he tosses me the best balls he’s found, the soft Titleists, and holds out his hand. “I want you to get used to tipping,” he explains.

No tip, I say--but how about a wager. The final two holes for $5 each. I’ll give him a stroke a hole.

I step up to the 17th tee, a par 3, and fog the pin, my shot landing a few feet from the cup. But again I miss the birdie putt, and he’s able to tie me with his handicap. Then I three-putt the last hole, and he sinks a slippery five-footer to win it. Beaten by a Winnie the Pooh salesman. No, I’m not ready for Michael Jordan, even on the golf course.

*

There’s no fruit bowl in my suite at the Mirage. There is a bar, two sofas, four telephones, a safe, two huge TVs--one that pops up from the foot of the bed--artwork of urns, a fake bonsai tree and a bathroom the size of Rhode Island. The stereo is tuned to a religious station--sermonizing about a British lord who devoted his life to breeding white mice--so I find some Beethoven and plunk myself in the Whirlpool bath. My back is killing me, the price of taking on Tom’s challenge to hit the long ball.

To get to the suite, I’d checked in at the “invited guest” line to the right of the waterfall in the lobby. I plunked down a credit card and was given a key to the special elevators to “the towers” and an envelope with details of the golf package: A limo will pick me up at 9:45 a.m. I am to wear no metal spikes, carry no cameras or cell phones and bring “no extra persons”-- meaning no spouses riding shotgun in the golf cart. Your spouse or a buddy can play, sure--for $500 extra.

After the whirlpool, I head for the blackjack tables. I sit next to a couple of young women in town for a bachelorette party--God bless equal opportunity--and buy $100 in chips. When those are gone, I get $70 more and am reminded how gambling is like golf: The challenge is to exercise emotional control when things go badly. A couple of times, I’m down to my last $10. But I rebound. When I quit at 1:30 a.m., I have $100 in chips--meaning it cost me $70 for four hours entertainment. Cheaper than greens fees in these parts.

Before turning in, I call room service to order breakfast. A fruit plate.

*

The limo goes north on I-15, past warehouses, freight trains, run-down apartments and a junkyard. But a minute after we pull off the highway, I spot our destination: a fenced square of land ringed with hills and pines like you’d expect in the Rockies. The driver is questioned over an intercom, then we’re through the gate.

The clubhouse is . . . understated. It resembles a gentleman’s country farmhouse, in the mold of clubhouses built at Augusta and other old-line clubs devoted solely to golf, eschewing swimming pools or similar diversions. Almost everything at Shadow Creek is understated, you quickly see: plain green golf carts with no computer screens or other adornments; plain green score- cards without fancy maps of the course; and a caddy who’s not a showgirl but a member of the golf team at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.

What’s not low-key are the names on the lockers. The clubhouse manager directs me to the one I’ll be using--Andre Agassi’s. To the left is former Masters champ Ben Crenshaw’s, then Tommy La- sorda’s. President Bush has his name on one, and, yes, Michael Jordan has another. I hang a change of clothes above the old pair of tennis shoes in Agassi’s, then head for the driving range.

The range is divided into private areas, each with room for a foursome, no more. My caddy, Chris, rolls me balls to hit, one by one. Then I take a few practice putts and say, “Let’s go.” A pheasant saunters by.

They send me off as a onesome. Just me, Chris and the cart--he’s a ride-along caddy, not a club-carrying one.

The first hole has the course’s namesake creek running all the way to the green, but it’s short--a gentle start. My drive leaves me an easy wedge to the pin. I promptly chunk it short. A bogey.

On the second hole, I pull my drive into the trees. The pine needles on the ground bring back memories of the Pinehurst, N.C., courses, where my father took me as a teenager. Another bogey.

When I again pull my drive left off the next tee, I apologize to my lone witness, muttering about my knee, back and the ravages of age. Chris--who dutifully has been filling my divots with seed and explaining breaks on the greens--shrugs off the apology and suggests a change in my stance that takes strain off the knee. “You have to understand,” he says, “that most people get here because they’re big on the tables, not good at golf. Some have hardly swung a club before. It’s a treat to get a player.”

I reward his kind remark by finally hitting a few crisp shots, on a long par 5 that winds around a lake and some willow trees. Then we reach our first par 3, “the abyss hole,” where you hit over--well, an abyss, dynamited into the hard desert. My iron shot starts straight but is blown to the left by wind that you couldn’t feel from the tee. It ends up a daunting 75 feet from the cup. Chris tells me to aim 18 inches above the hole. The putt rolls smooth and on line. Kerplunk. After three days of missing short birdie putts, I make a monster.

Two holes later, I make another winding birdie putt. By now, we have company. Seeing a cart behind us, we wave it up. I’m joined by Doug, a lawyer from Washington state, and his family’s teenage nanny, who is riding along. The ban on spectators apparently does not apply to him, and I sense why. He’s the sort of person Shadow Creek was built for. In fact, he’s played it 41 times this year. For free, in his case.

Doug’s family is staying--”comped”--in the best digs at Wynn’s first Vegas hotel, the downtown Golden Nugget. Their suite has an outdoor spa, grand piano and steam room. He eats in any restaurant at Wynn’s hotels, never paying. “I come here,” he says, “because I like the treatment they afford you.” Who wouldn’t?

He only gets that treatment, though, as long as he gambles. Hours each night. High-stakes blackjack. He calls it “work,” as in, “I go to work--and hope to come out alive.” This weekend, he says, he watched another high roller drop $9.3 million at baccarat.

Doug’s golf bag has guest tags from Pebble Beach and other famous links. But nowhere else, he says, can he have a course of this quality almost to himself. He can play here in 21/2 hours.

Now we whiz around together, past swans and African cranes and the 20,000 trees that block out the barren desert while leaving the mountain views unobstructed. Some holes easily have $1 million in landscaping, with everything from a waterfall to floral displays worthy of an Impressionist painting, as on the par 3 named “Shangri-la.”

After I get my third birdie, on a par 4, I decide my destiny this round is to try for more of those suckers--and enjoy the ride. By the time we reach the 18th, a spectacular par 5, I don’t give a thought to the creek protecting the green. I go for the pin. What can stop me? Well, the water. In goes my ball. Then another. It’s like a replay of the climactic scene in the Kevin Costner golf movie “Tin Cup,” in which he wins Rene Russo but throws away the U.S. Open trying to prove a point on the final hole. In goes another ball.

You win some, you lose some.

I bid Doug and his nanny goodbye, wishing him luck at blackjack. “It’s about streaks,” he confides. “If you can’t identify a streak, you shouldn’t be gambling.”

Then I tell my caddy we’re not done. I want to play another nine. And do it right.

I birdie the first hole, miss by an inch on the second and settle in for serious play. So what if my plan to break par for the nine crumbles on the final shot, when I again get greedy on an over-the-creek approach. You win some, you lose . . . more.

I tip Chris $140. I figure $100 is about right for the regular 18, the rest earned by going extra holes. I get my clean clothes from Agassi’s locker, take a shower and head to the bar for a beer.

One other player is seated there, so I join him. I’m just learning Scott’s story--he’s 32, from Denver, has a software business and plays blackjack in Vegas most every weekend, fully comped--when three men sit at the next table.

I recognize Steve Wynn, of course. The others seem to be from Australia. They start talking about the latest private jet--one that can fly all the way to Hong Kong--and some $500-million casino deal. Wynn makes the case for pointed marketing. “When you try to be everything to everybody,” he says, “you’re perfect to nobody. Now, the success of Las Vegas was due to . . . .”

I know, it’s rude to eavesdrop, and ruder still to interrupt, especially when the guy’s in the lounge of his own club, looking out over his incredible 18th hole and, beyond that, his own mansion--did I mention his house?

But I may never be back here. I introduce myself and say, “Nice course.”

“It’s the trees,” he says, “and the slopes--a sense of enclosure.”

He pushes aside his plate of spaghetti and launches into the story of how he and Fazio did it, how “every stone in every creek had to be brought in . . . like we were making a 260-acre Japanese garden,” how they shipped in 800 tons of pine needles and used cupcake tins and a spy plane to count the number of sprinkler connections.

He’s on a roll, in a great mood, recounting the miracle. Then this Scott fellow, sitting beside me, asks about . . . Donald Trump. The Donald, it seems, recently claimed that Atlantic City is doing better than Vegas. Can you imagine? Right in the guy’s living room, virtually, asking about that wannabe from Jersey who’s great at self-promotion, but could he really raise $50 million if his life depended on it?

Wynn stands over our table. “Let me tell you about the time we’re walking down Madison Avenue and Donald Trump says to me . . . .”

I’d like to go on, and Wynn did. But what’s said at the club really should remain right there, between the guys, don’t you think?

Scott and I share a limo back to the Mirage. By then, the answer to “Was it worth it?” seems clear. Of course not--unless you can afford it.

I tried to add it up in my head, the greens fee-and-suite package, the caddy, other tips, the bar, room service. The round had cost, oh, roughly $1,242.98.

*

I had two hours to kill at the hotel before my flight. I sat at a 25-cent video-poker machine, about as low as you can go in Vegas. I fed it a $20 bill. Got 80 credits.

I was a credit away from going bust before I rallied. Then I got two pair. A straight. A full house. A streak!

At 85 credits, I quit. I had a profit. $1.25.

As easy as that. One thousand more wins on that machine and I had another round of golf.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Guidebook: Teeing Off In Vegas

Getting there: Las Vegas is 54 minutes from Los Angeles by air. Most major airlines fly to Las Vegas, with America West, Southwest and United airlines offering flights throughout the day. Southwest also flies there from Burbank. By car, it’s a 272-mile drive, four to six hours, depending on traffic. Take I-10 east to I-15 north through Victorville and Barstow, then to Las Vegas.

Where to golf: The Desert Inn, 3145 Las Vegas Blvd. South; (800) 634-6909, fax (702) 733-4774. Rates vary. Rooms are $155 and up at peak times (packages and weekday prices are much lower). Greens fees for hotel guests, including cart and practice balls: $120 Monday through Thursday, $145 weekends and holidays; $215 for non-guests.

Las Vegas Paiute Resort, (800) 711-2833, fax (702) 658-5996. Located off U.S. 95, 20 miles northwest of downtown Las Vegas, the resort has two courses: Snow Mountain and Sun Mountain. Greens fees: $100 Monday through Thursday, $110 weekends.

Primm Valley Golf Club, on I-15 at the California-Nevada border; (800) 386-7867. Weekday room rates start at $23 at the three Primadonna hotels (Buffalo Bill’s, Whiskey Pete’s and Primm Valley) but rise on weekends. For golf reservations, call (702) 679-5510. Lake Course is open and Desert Course debuts in December. Greens fees for hotel guests: $100 weekdays, $120 weekends; for non-guests, $140 weekdays, $165 weekends.

Shadow Creek, 3 Shadow Creek Drive, North Las Vegas; reserve through the Mirage Hotel, 3400 Las Vegas Blvd. South; (800) 627-6667, fax (702) 791-7414. One-thousand-dollar package includes 18 holes of golf at Shadow Creek, a one-bedroom suite, caddy and limo to the course. With a second player, it’s $1,500--or $1,800 for a two-bedroom suite.

For more information: There are more than two dozen golf courses in the area. For a map, contact the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, 3150 Paradise Road, Las Vegas, Nev. 89101; (702) 735-3611, fax (702) 735-6200.