Golf

Las Vegas Paiute Resort, Sun Mountain Details

• Opened:
  1996.
• 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: Bill 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, Sun 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.

Sun Mountain, opened in 1996, is framed like its brothers by yucca and Joshua trees and hundreds of wildflowers. It combines rye-grass fairways, bentgrass greens and railroad-tie trimmed bunkers and pot bunkers with vast waste areas separating the holes from the rugged desert terrain.

The signature hole is the par-3 fourth, playing 206 yards from the back tees. The tee shot must carry water running from tee to green along the right side, and the green is further protected by a long sand bunker between the water and green. The other par 3's measure 204, 219 and 198 yards from the back tees.

Six of the par 4's measure more than 400 yards from the back tees, including the par-4, 465-yard 12th. But as with every Dye course, there's something for everyone: two of the par 5's measure just 500 yards from the middle tees, and the course offers four sets of tees.

Course statistics: