Warm Weather Getaways: La Quinta
May 20th, 2007 | Written by Editor | Category: Golf Vacations |
by Geoff Russell
The La Quinta Resort & Club turned 70 this year and, as you might expect, there is little similarity now to the way this little Mexican-style retreat catered to its Hollywood clientele back in the Roaring ’20s.
You can no longer drive down from L.A. Friday night on a $1.50 tankful of gas, expect to make it around one of its courses Saturday morning on a $1 green fee and a 30-cent sleeve of balls, or enjoy the chef’s special at one of its three restaurants that evening for five bucks plus tip. You don’t run into Clark Gable’s backswing in the hallways or find Bette Davis in the hot tub outside your casita anymore, either.
But one thing hasn’t changed here since 1926: the weather. It’s still perfect, and it’s still free. And when you’re shivering out a December snowstorm contemplating a quick golf getaway, the last thing you want to be consulting as you make plans is The Weather Channel.
The golf at La Quinta is spectacular. Credit goes to Pete Dye. Guests at the resort have access to four courses, three of them-the Mountain and Dunes Courses at La Quinta itself, and the TPC Stadium at nearby PGA West-were designed by the enigmatic Dye.
I have experienced each of the Pete Dye Periods a golfer can endure: I craved his courses. I criticized them. I cringed at them. Now I coexist with them, quite happily. Dye’s layouts are interesting, challenging and usually in superb condition. In La Quinta’s case they also happen to be three-fourths of the best collection of courses anywhere in Palm Springs.
The TPC Stadium is more of a curiosity than a great layout-the 19-foot-deep bunkers, the hole named Alcatraz, the 142 Slope rating-from the blue tees. It may not be the toughest course in the world, but it is the course that was too tough for the PGA Tour pros, which means the rest of us have to play it once, just to say we finished.
The Mountain Course is a legitimately great layout, a scrub-brushed, desert-canyon-mountain excursion that spawned so many copycat “Big-horns,” “Quarries” and “Rancho La Quintas” in recent years.
The Mountain’s front nine is shoved up against a particularly stunning member of the Santa Rosas, the rocky mountain range that borders the hotel. The back nine winds its way up into those mountains, culminating in the downhill par-3 16th, probably the most dramatic one-shotter Dye ever built without relying on an island green.
The Dunes and La Quinta’s fourth layout, the Jack Nicklaus course at PGA West, although not as stunning as the Mountain or as strenuous as the Stadium, are solid tests-the perfect setup for enjoying the rest of what La Quinta is about.
The attractive casitas at the resort are more like guest cottages than hotel rooms, and each group of eight really has its own hot tub. The eggs Benedict at the Sunday champagne brunch at Montañas is the best reason to push back your morning starting time. And the margarita they make at the Adobe Grill is the best reason to skip the emergency nine.
Bookmark at:StumbleUpon | Digg | Del.icio.us | Dzone | Newsvine | Spurl | Reddit | Yahoo! MyWeb
