Black Desert
When most think about southwest Utah and the Greater Zion area, they first picture natural beauty and national parks. Places like Zion National Park, Red Cliffs National Conservation Area, and Snow Canyon State Park.
But the picturesque region is quietly becoming a golf mecca, with 13 courses and counting.
And the newest – Black Desert Resort – might be the best of the bunch.
It was six decades ago that the City of St. George developed the nine-hole course of Dixie Red Hills, a scenic layout hugging the sandstone cliffs that helped draw in tourism and transform the area from a desert gas station stop. The course today is still a fun walk, playing around rocks and through mature trees, and a wonderful welcome to golf in the southwest corner of the Beehive State.
For pure visual drama, however, it’s hard to top several of the newest championship courses in and around Greater Zion.
Sand Hollow
Sand Hollow is an outright stunner, particularly a string of holes on the back nine that play along the edges of steep sandy cliffs. Opened in 2008, the layout has not only been recognized as the No. 1 course in Utah, but one of the top resort courses in the country. Rightfully so.
Perched atop hills near Sand Hollow State Park, the John Fought design opens by taking full advantage of the wide-open vistas and unique red rock outcroppings that offer definition and drama.
The heart beats a little faster once players make the turn, with holes 11 through 15 situated across a towering ridgeline. Followers of golf-related accounts on social media have no doubt seen arresting aerials of the two consecutive par-4s that make visitors grip the club a little tighter on the tee.
Sand Hollow
Cooper Rock Golf Course
About 10 miles away, Copper Rock Golf Course gets its name from the vibrant color that bathes the surrounding hills at sunset.
The course is another relatively new one, opened in 2020 as the centerpiece to a resort community nestled in the Hurricane Valley, on acres of desert once used for farming. Copper Rock plays across dunes dotted with native sagebrush, but it’s the sweeping vistas that demand attention on every hole; from the Hurricane Cliffs and Pine Valley Mountains to the stop-and-stare, long-distance views of Zion National Park and beyond.
Copper Rock
Black Desert Resort
The property that is thrusting the region into another echelon, however, is the Black Desert Resort.
If Dixie Red Hills helped introduce golf to the St. George/Zion area back in the 1960s, then Black Desert is poised to introduce golf in the region to the rest of the country.
The sprawling 600-acre resort and entertainment complex is so large it spans three cities: St. George as well as Ivins and Santa Clara. There will be a 700-room hotel to start, with a long-range vision of over 3,000 rooms on the property and more than 20 restaurants, many connected by a pedestrian-only boardwalk. There will be an indoor/outdoor concert and sports venue, a water park, a convention center, a 15,000-square-foot spa and wellness center, and more than six miles of public hiking trails through a 200+ acre preserved area.
But the resort’s initial showstopper is the golf, and a course that landed both PGA Tour and LPGA events right out of the gate. It joins Pebble Beach and Tiburon as the only courses in the country to be selected as host of both a PGA Tour FedEx Cup event (set for the second week of October 2024) and an LPGA tournament (inaugural visit scheduled for first week of May 2025).
The late Tom Weiskopf designed as unique a course as you’re likely to find anywhere, a creative and fun layout that weaves through black lava rock and is surrounded by national park beauty. On a recent visit, we even came across a large desert tortoise slowly making its way across one of the greens.
The contrast of the green fairways and greens against the jagged black outcroppings of ancient lava is striking, with the direction of Weiskopf’s routing inspired by the dramatic surrounds. One of the reasons Weiskopf, who died in August 2022 after a battle with pancreatic cancer, was selected to design the course was because of his past work in the lava fields on Hawaii’s Big Island with celebrated layouts like Hualalai and Waikoloa.
The Black Desert course is incredible off the tee, with surprising elevation changes, several reachable par 4s, deep bunkering, a downhill par-3 with a bunker in the middle of the green, lava islands, a double green, and even a 19th hole. It’s also loaded with “lookback holes” – the kind where you putt out, then turn around and pull out the camera while admiring the beauty of the look and layout.
The par-3s are memorable, the last of which (No. 17) is a short one-shotter Weiskopf says is a “spinoff” of the Postage Stamp 8th hole at Royal Troon, where he won the 1973 Open Championship. Hitting and holding the green is just the start of the challenge.
Utah might not be top of mind for a golf getaway, but the southwest part of the state is loaded with natural beauty. Combine that setting with some great new courses and you’ve got a golf destination that must be seen — and experienced – to be believed, along with all the hiking, biking and other outdoor adventures in the Greater Zion region.
Black Desert