Ready the ribbons and prepare the senses for that new course smell.
In what has become a rarity in the golf-rich Coachella Valley, a new layout will open as Toscana Country Club in Indian Wells unveils its completed North Course on Nov. 13. The Jack Nicklaus Design track partially debuted in 2005 with 10 holes – the front nine and par-5 18th, which needed to be completed because of its location near the clubhouse. Toscana’s South Course, also designed by Nicklaus, opened in December 2004.
The unveiling of a full North Course will mark the first 18-hole championship course to open in the desert since Eagle Falls Golf Club at Fantasy Springs Resort Casino debuted in 2007.
According to Dave Craig, director of golf at Toscana, membership interest in playing the new track has been high.
“The members are ecstatic, and we made sure we communicated with them throughout the process,” Craig said. “We were doing videos of the process on a monthly basis and sending them out to the members.”
What members will see when able to stick a tee in the ground is a nice continuity with the front side that sets the North Course apart from the South Course’s parkland style of play. At just 72 acres of playable turf, the shot-shaping North has a natural feel of desert landscape routing that embraces the dry climate mandates of grass restriction and less impact on the environment. Together, Toscana’s South and finished North will be irrigated with 95 percent non-potable water via the Colorado River-supplied Mid-Valley Pipeline.
Readying the North has been a fifth-gear process for the club in the past year. In the waning days of December 2014, Nicklaus paid a visit on a rare frigid day to inspect and give his approval to the routing and architectural elements.
“Mr. Nicklaus spent hours and hours out there in 30-degree weather, just going over all the little aspects of each tee and fairway and green complex. It was pretty amazing,” Craig said. “He’s very concerned with the playability; there’s got to be a look to it and a feel to it and the members have to be able play it. It’s about the members, not this grandiose design.”
Which is why Nicklaus zeroed in on what might seem like tiny details to a golf outsider.
“For instance, when he looked at the 13th hole, a par-4, and where the bunker was designed in front of the green, he questioned himself and said, ‘Why would I do that? It gives the members no access, no bailout area,’” Craig recalled. “But it tells you how much he’s thinking about the member and not what he’d like to see for Tour players.”
This past spring, Nicklaus returned to Indian Wells for a spot check and to ensure continuity between the North’s existing side and new nine.
“A huge part of what we did in his last visit was to make sure the greens were consistent with what we’d done on the front side of the North,” Craig said. “We spent almost as much time during his spring visit on the front nine as we did on the back. He was very careful to make sure that the continuity was there, specifically on the greens, to ensure they feel the same and look the same when you go from the front to the back.”
In the past decade, much of golf’s consistency has been a downward trend in participation, with the National Golf Foundation reporting that course closures in the U.S. outpaced openings for eight consecutive years, beginning in 2006. But with the look of yet-to-be tackled holes bringing sanguinity, Craig sees reason for optimism.
“I do get a sense – locally, regionally, nationally – of how the game is doing. And it does seem to have leveled out and to be back on the increase,” he said. “The golf industry is doing all the right things now, but there are clubs that just aren’t run properly. They don’t get run as a business with realistic objectives and realistic goals and realistic spending. That stuff will still probably play out over the next 10 years, but I think the health of the golf economy – of the industry here in the Coachella Valley – is generally pretty good.”
And, at least at Toscana, he’s banking on it getting better.
“There’s an excitement about this,” Craig said about the completion of the North Course. “No doubt about it.”
