Golf

Las Vegas Paiute Resort, Snow Mountain Details

• Opened:
  1995.
• Course designed by:
  Pete Dye.
• Course Management:
  N/A.
• General Manager / Director of Golf:
  Byron Cone.
• Head golf professional:
  Greg Wickensimer.
• Course Record:
  Snow Mountain: Billy Harvey, 65; Sun Mountain: Gary Wise, 64; Wolf: Karrie Webb, 64.
• Tee Time Policy:
  Reservations are accepted 60 days in advance with rates ranging from the mid-$100s. Green fee includes cart and use of the practice facility.
• Course Map:
  Click here.

Las Vegas Paiute Resort, Snow Mountain Review

Las Vegas Paiute Golf Resort won a 2004 VegasGolfer fairway award for "Best Overall Experience," and readers also picked Paiute's Wolf course for "Best Upscale Course" in the valley. To keep its three Pete Dye courses in their always remarkable shape, Paiute employs three wells of its own. Resort workers pride themselves on conserving water and making every drop count. The result is impeccably maintained fairways and bentgrass greens that never go thirsty. In addition, the expansively beautiful, many-windowed adobe-style clubhouse is second to none for style, food, creature comforts and service.

At Paiute expansive is the word. There's no housing anywhere, nothing to distract from the natural beauty of the courses nestled between the Spring and Sheep Mountain Ranges. Dye, meanwhile, has smoothly engineered a seamless melding of golf with the natural surroundings. Most holes are isolated so that the only sounds come from the songs of the many desert birds that live in the colorful seas of desert plants, Joshua trees, cacti and red, yellow, purple, orange, mauve and pink desert flowers that border each hole. There's much more than golf at Paiute: Relax, take a deep breath of the fresh desert air and look around. Ducks dip in the many ponds at each of the courses, jack rabbits and chipmunks amble in and out of the brush, geese winter in the area, and bobcats and coyotes roam the valley.

For two-legged creature comforts -- refreshments, lunch, dinner or, for weddings, banquets or tournament receptions -- there's that award-winning clubhouse with a central skylight in its towering foyer, a long marble bar (with leather-padded stools), a separate smoking lounge and huge banquet rooms with floor-to-ceiling windows that look out on Snow Mountain's lake-fronted 18th green, gleaming cross-cut fairways and the ever-present mountains.

Snow Mountain opened in 1995 as the first of the three courses. It features wide, rye grass fairways and (thick) fescue rough undulating through the native desert, and bunkers accented by Dye's trademark railroad ties. There also are pot bunkers, several shimmering lakes and impeccable bentgrass greens.

No. 18 is the signature hole, a 445-yard, par-4 dogleg left with water guarding the left side from tee to green. There's a generous landing area for the tee shot, but there are bunkers right, and a too-safe bailout away from the water will leave a very long second shot to a green bordered by the water left and a bunker right. A par on this hole can feel like a birdie.

Course statistics: