The Desert Inn Golf Club opened in 1952 with an 18-hole championship golf course designed by Lawrence Hughes. At the time, Las Vegas had only a handful of golf courses, and the Desert Inn quickly became the city’s premier destination for golf.
Just three years later, the course landed one of the biggest events in professional golf. From 1953 through 1966, the Desert Inn hosted the PGA Tour’s Tournament of Champions.
Many of golf’s biggest names played at the Desert Inn during those years, including Sam Snead, Ben Hogan, Arnold Palmer, Billy Casper, Gene Littler and Jack Nicklaus. Palmer won the tournament twice, while Nicklaus claimed the title in 1964.
The course also helped introduce professional golf to a wider Las Vegas audience. Fans could watch the game’s biggest stars just minutes from the Strip, years before Las Vegas became known as a golf destination.
When Steve Wynn purchased the Desert Inn property in 2000, the original course was reimagined into mostly what it is today, a magnificent course in the heart of Las Vegas that has hosted major celebrity and professional events and who’s who plays nearly daily. Along the way, there have been some other renovations on the course and for a time it closed again, but was reopened.
Designed by Tom Fazio, the Wynn Golf Club opened in 2005. While the course has a completely different layout from the Desert Inn, visitors playing Wynn Golf Club are walking the same land where the PGA Tour’s Tournament of Champions helped establish Las Vegas as a stop on professional golf’s map.
SOON, a magical new clubhouse will open and golfers will tee off from the roof of it. The WYNN mysitque continues