Black Desert Resort, Utah

Black Desert Resort in St. George, Utah is a treat to play and a sight to behold.

If you were to survey the average American their opinion of the most scenic and beautiful places in the country, many would point to states like California, Alaska, Montana, Hawaii, and Colorado. I’ll refrain from using hyperbole here, so I’ll just say don’t you dare forget about Utah when the topic is brought forth. For some odd reason, the state’s endless natural beauty seems to be a secret.

Why, you might be asking, am I so quick to defend the Beehive State? A recent trip, of course! If you read our Colorado blog post a month ago, you’ll know a short time ago that I traveled to and from Arizona in order to spend a portion of the winter with family. It’s something my wife, kids, and I do every year. They fly, and I drive.

After departing with the Kia from my cousin’s place in Denver at around seven in the morning, I made my way west on Interstate 70 into the heart of the Rocky Mountains. The fact that the temperature could drop from fifty degrees to twenty and back up to sixty again by the time you hit Grand Junction is incredible to this uneducated flatlander. So too are the mountain towns that make way for a vast openness as you meander your way into Utah.

It would be hours into the afternoon before I would reach my final destination of St. George. In recent years, St. George has rightly become a golf destination hotspot. With public courses like Black Desert, Sand Hollow, Coral Canyon, Copper Rock, and The Ledges, it’s easy to see why. There’s also a noteworthy private entry, Entrada at Snow Canyon.

No project in the St. George area has garnered more excitement from its inception than Black Desert Resort. The PGA Tour played its inaugural event of a four-year contract at the course last October, and the LPGA is one month away from commencing its five year deal to host a tournament at the course. Respected national rankings already love the St. George darling. GolfWeek ranked the property eighty-first among modern golf courses in the United States and thirty-second among all public layouts. Top100GolfCourses.com hands Black Desert the silver medal among every course in Utah. I’m not one to roll the dice, but I’d bet my entire life savings there’s a spot reserved in next year’s Golf Digest Top 100 Public for the 2023 design.

Tom Weiskopf, the course’s architect, unfortunately passed away a few years ago and never was lucky enough to witness the final product. What he would have seen would surely make him ecstatic. I’ve played many Weiskopf designs, from Forest Highland’s Canyon course to The Rim to the three Troons of Scottsdale (the private Troon Country Club and Troon North’s Monument and Pinnacle), and Black Desert is ranked near the absolute top.

Many golf courses in the southwestern United States rely far too much on scenery, but at Black Desert the views are just the beginning. I would be remiss not to mention the iconic red rock backdrops, the lively green grass, the jet black lava framing the holes, and the sugar white sand, each element coming together to form a brilliant contrast. It’s visually attractive in a nonconventional way not seen in other places.

Black Desert backs up its jaw-dropping landscapes with exceptional golf. Every spot on the course is impeccably conditioned. The greens have a generous amount of slope, and some are perched while others are played into. There is an insane variety of golf holes, no two looking or playing the same.

I’ve always said that my favorite type of hole is the short par four, and that every golf course should have one. Black Desert has two: the fifth is a 320-yard straight away protected by lava on the right and an ominous bunker just short and left of the putting surface; while the 297-yard fourteenth, all carry over the bunker for the big hitter, offers the most generous bailout area on the entire course to the left. There are options galore, a theme of Black Desert’s.

A few of the par threes on the routing shine brightly. The third, like TPC San Antonio’s sixteenth or Riviera’s sixth, sports a bunker smack dab in the middle of the green. The pin was located on the right the day I played, and I hit a smooth mid-iron to eight feet. We need not speak of the uphill putt I left six inches short. I also really enjoyed the downhill eighth, its backdrop framed by the newly finished resort and jagged red rock peaks.

If the 568-yard par-five seventh feels like you’re playing a tumbling tee shot into a canyon of tall lava rock, that’s because it’s precisely the reality. A few random humps of the black stuff scattered among the fairway and leading up to and around the green create a visually striking golf hole. Though it may not be a popular opinion, as far as par fives go, I preferred the 485-yard eleventh and 493-yard thirteenth, and not because they were shorter, easier, and could be seen from each other’s putting surfaces. The former can be played many ways on the second shot, both aggressively into a fast, kidney-bean shaped green surrounded by a pond, three bunkers, and a patch of thick, tangly rough. The latter is from the bite-off-as-much-as-you-can-chew family, with its intriguing water hazard to the left. I loved the bowl shape of the green complex, too.

If I had to nitpick Black Desert, I would say that without a forecaddie on hand, a few tee shots are impossible to predict. Luckily for us, we had an exceptionally knowledgable forecaddie, so the tee shots were easier to predict. Without recounting the entire round, the fourth and the seventh are two shots I remember as being particularly tricky to read. Pace of play was a little slow, too, but I guess that is to be expected when you’re playing a highly anticipated round. You could say the greens fee is too expensive, but again, what do you expect?

The moral of the story here is that if you are a golfer and don’t mind paying a premium, Black Desert in St. George is worth every penny. The highest compliment that I can give the golf course is that I opted to play it and watch the Super Bowl, the most watched sporting event in America, on tape delay. Black Desert is unlike anything in the golf world and reason enough to visit southern Utah. Unless, of course, incredible scenery and memorable golf isn’t your thing. Maybe we shouldn’t let the secret of Utah out more than it needs to be.