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Golf Digest

June 2003

BENSON'S SAN PEDRO COURSE OPENS: Looks hard, plays easy

Tuesday, January 28, 2003
Copyright © Tuscon Citizen

By JACK RICKARD
Tucson Citizen

... BENSON - Golf course architect Mark Rathert had an unusual challenge when he designed the San Pedro Golf Course, which opened here last weekend. He had to route play around the sewage treatment plant in the center of the property.
   San Pedro, as its name implies, is built along the banks of the river by that name. The city offered a 99-year lease on the land plus an "extremely favorable" arrangement for reclaimed water in the hopes of having its first regulation 18-hole golf course. Tom Hartley, a Denver-based banker and developer, bankrolled the project.
   Rathert was successful in routing play around the sewage treatment plant. The only time one takes special notice of it is on the elevated tee of the par-3 16th hole. You get a full view of the plant from there.
   "There was no way I could route play back to the clubhouse at the end of nine holes," Rathert explained.
So San Pedro has an outgoing nine and an inward nine, just like the Old Course at St. Andrews.
   Rathert, also from Denver, spent 15 years designing golf courses in Asia, particularly Japan, Thailand and Malaysia.
   He has some interesting theories on design. Example: "I like to make things look hard but play easy."
   That definitely was true on the par-4 third hole. A player has his choice: Either try to clear Benson Gulch with a tee shot of some 180 yards or more, or play safely to the right and go on from there. The tee shot looks terrifying, but it isn't that difficult if you get it airborne. ...

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ATTENTION TO DETAIL: Boulder City course offers challenges

Wednesday, January 15, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

By KEVIN IOLE
REVIEW-JOURNAL

... Clark County is home to golf courses designed by most of the top architects in the business, men such as Tom Fazio, Pete Dye, Rees Jones, Robert Trent Jones Sr. and Jr., Arthur Hills, Ted Robinson and Jack Nicklaus.
    Not many people would put Mark Rathert's name on that list -- at least not now. But Rathert took a major step toward working his way onto that list with the opening of Boulder Creek Golf Club in Boulder City.
    It is a municipal course with a country club feel that has 27 holes of golf that are a testament to Rathert's eye and attention to detail.
    "When I looked at Mark's bid and saw what he had in mind, I thought it would come out well," Boulder Creek general manager Scott Jones said. "But what we have is beyond my wildest dreams. What he accomplished is incredible." ...

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January 2003 "Vegas Golfer"©

The "New" Creek
by Richard Matthews

    Below the Early California style clubhouse on a hill, rainbows flit above sprinkler streams. Oasis-themed lakes and waterfalls, star-burst palms, undulant (Bermuda) fairways, bent-grass greens and white-sand bunkers sparkle. Already the Boulder Creek Golf Club looks as if its able to justify its $18.7 million price tag. Add a lighted two-ended driving range, a huge learning center, a lighted par 3 course that will be the Valley's longest-all framed in a mountain frieze - and the layout even looks ready to impact the tough golf market across Southern Nevada.
    "Everything came together and exceeded our expectations, by far," says Brian Nix, president of the Boulder City committee that kicked off the project back in 1999.
    The new course, which opens in January, seems to have gotten so many things right that the toughest task management may face might be how best to market. Do you focus on the 27 tournament caliber holes-with each nine's recurring theme of oasis-arroyo-desert holes-created by internationally renowned architect Mark Rathert; the charming location in the fresh air of historic Boulder City; or maybe the fact that Chris Riley is on board as the club's man on the PGA Tour? Or maybe you stress that the course is pocketbook as well as public-player friendly, and that the quality of the experience it offers makes moot the term "muni" golf.
    General Manager Scott Jones, who has previously built two dozen courses around the world, including Siena Golf Club locally and Red Rock Country Club's first 18, will proudly tell you the new facility features "Standards and expertise in construction and design of the caliber of anything in Vegas."
    The site offers 420 acres (most new courses feature roughly 140) without housing restrictions; Boulder City owns thousands of acres from the new course-on the Vegas side of Boulder City at State Highway 95 and Veteran's Memorial Parkway-all the way to Bootleg Canyon in the distance. All that land allowed Rathert to design tees (six sets), fairways, bunkers and greens on a big, broad scale, stretch to any combination of his three nines beyond 7,400 yards, and also to build five putting and two chipping greens.
    Rathert's hole designs are eye-pleasing, sensible, challenging and never busy or overwrought. Hidden hazards are virtually nonexistent, fairways are mostly wide and generous, and there's plenty of variety in hole designs, directions ("I've always wanted to snap your head," Rathert says.) and distances.
    The overall variety-par 3s from 170 to 243 yards, par 4s from 400 to 490 and par 5s from 535 to 633-should allow most players to swing all 14 clubs.
    There's also a nice array of greenside trouble, including sand, water, undulations and the angle of the green to the fairway. Seven holes feature alternate, or split, fairways. The three finishing holes on Coyote Run are representative: No. 16 (Coyote's 7th)
    633-yard, downhill, double-dogleg, split-fairway par 5. A deep arroyo runs along the right side then turns diagonally 150 yards in front of the green. The drive must also avoid two bunkers left. The second shot offers one fairway left with three bunkers at its far end and another near its center. This choice leaves a third shot that brings a huge, front-left greenside hunker into play. The aggressive second shot is over the arroyo, where it cuts its diagonal, though a bunker right can punish a bailout attempt. The reward is a short third shot that skirts or negates the greenside bunker.
    No. 17 is an unforgettable, 170-yard par 3. In an enclosed amphitheater, two waterfalls flow from the left into a lake fronting the center-terraced green. A huge "sandbar" hunker sits between the water and green, which looks ribbon thin from the tee. "But it's plenty roomy up there," says Rathert. "All you gotta do is hit the ball over the bunker."
The 446-yard 18th hole, a split-fairway par 4, is a classic finisher and a good example of the pragmatic beauty of Rathert's design at Boulder Creek Golf Club. The natural teeing area would have left a blind shot and no tee-box view of the clubhouse oasis, so Rathert raised the tee 37 feet. A drive to the plateau of the left fairway must carry an arroyo, but the reward is a clean shot at a back-to-front-sloping green. A drive straight toward the green leaves a diagonal approach over a large greenside hunker. This hole is also another visual stunner, as is the 430-yard 9th hole of the Desert Hawk nine, which plays from roughly the same elevation back to the clubhouse.
    The Eldorado nine is similarly themed and though without the water features, it offers a sense of isolation-in its distance from the clubhouse-that lends it a quiet serenity.
    "It's everything that I'd envisioned," says Rathert. "(This) course will keep you fresh, which makes you play better. And primarily, the underlying thing is, it's going to look difficult, but I think it will play easy."

Boulder City plans top-flight course
Boulder Creek municipal facility to feature 27 championship holes