Elite Traveler Spring 2020

VIVA LAS VEGAS WYNN GOLF CLUB, LAS VEGAS

You wouldn’t know it if you were standing on the Las Vegas Strip, but through Wynn Resort’s opulent lobby and casino, beyond its rear doors, a well-hidden jewel is waiting to be discovered. That sparkling gem, a 6,722-yard golf course designed by Tom Fazio, is like the Central Park of Sin City —minus the easy public access. Skillfully routed across 129 acres, the Wynn Golf Club impresses as much for its manicured fairways and greens as it does for the 7,000 mature trees and 100,000 shrubs that provide a framework for the alleys and corridors that players must navigate on each hole. Built on the site of the former Desert Inn Golf Club, the newWynn Golf Club is a redesigned layout of the original Wynn Golf Club that opened in 2005 (also a Tom Fazio design) but closed in late 2017 without a clear or certain future. To accommodate a new convention center, the course was trimmed — down two strokes to par 70 — and eight of the holes are entirely new designs (the remaining 10 have all been significantly revamped). Most impressively, more than 400,000 cubic yards of earth were moved and shaped to create eye- catching ridges and valleys, which help to isolate each individual hole — not an easy task considering the course’s small footprint. “The idea was to incorporate some excitement in the terrain,” Fazio says. Given its location, the course is surrounded by excitement, as many of the towers along the Vegas Strip are boldly in view from tee boxes and some of the fairways. Not to be outdone, Wynn Golf Club finishes with a long, dramatic par-3 hit to a green framed by a 35-ft-tall and 100-ft-wide waterfall. As Fazio explains matter-of-factly, “the golf course had to measure up.” wynnlasvegas.com