Bear's Best Golf Club

Bear's Best Golf Club in Las Vegas is a unique Jack Nicklaus design concept that opened in 2001 in the Summerlin area, assembling 18 of Nicklaus's favorite holes from among the more than 270 courses he designed worldwide into a single 7,229-yard layout. Regional design elements from each original course travel with the replica hole — palm trees from Cabo del Sol, black slag bunkers from Old Works in Montana, pine trees and elevation changes from Castle Pines in Colorado — creating a visually diverse, architecturally eclectic experience unlike any other course in the world.

Bear's Best Golf Club opened in Las Vegas in 2001 with a premise that Jack Nicklaus himself described as more difficult than designing a new course from scratch: select 18 of his favorite holes from the hundreds he'd designed over a career spanning more than four decades, then recreate them faithfully in the Nevada desert. The concept originated from Nicklaus's recognition that his accumulated body of work contained individual holes of exceptional quality that most golfers would never have the opportunity to play — either because they were at private clubs, at remote resort destinations, or in other countries. Bear's Best proposed to solve this problem by bringing those holes together in a single, accessible public facility in Las Vegas, a city already well-established as a destination for golf tourism. The selection process required Nicklaus and his design team to review photographs, plans, and documentation of more than 270 courses worldwide, ultimately choosing 18 holes that represented not only his design achievement but the geographic and stylistic range of his career.

The result is a course that moves from the elevated, pine-framed terrain of Castle Pines Golf Club in Colorado to the desert hardscape of Desert Highlands in Arizona, from the seaside character of Cabo del Sol in Mexico to the volcanic black slag bunkers of Old Works in Montana. Each hole carries its regional design elements to Las Vegas: the palm trees, the specific sand colors, the shaping language characteristic of each original site. The black sand bunkers on the fourth and eleventh holes — replicas of Nicklaus's design at Old Works Golf Course in Anaconda, Montana — became the course's most visually distinctive feature and a source of its identity. The contrast between the white sand used elsewhere on the course and the black slag at those two holes immediately signals to arriving golfers that Bear's Best operates according to different rules from conventional golf design.

The course plays to 7,229 yards from the Gold tees with a par of 72, a course rating of 74.5, and a slope of 140 — numbers that challenge even strong players, appropriate for a concept built on showcasing Nicklaus's most celebrated design achievements. The Summerlin location west of the Las Vegas Strip provided both the desert landscape appropriate for a Nicklaus desert design and proximity to the resort hotels that supply the course's visitor traffic. Bear's Best Golf Club plays approximately 7,100 yards from the championship tees on a Jack Nicklaus design in Las Vegas, Nevada that assembles the best holes from Nicklaus's career portfolio of course designs into a single Las Vegas routing — a concept-course model that gives visitors the opportunity to experience the strategic highlights of multiple Nicklaus designs in a single round. The Bear's Best concept — offering "the best of the Bear" from courses across multiple states — provides Las Vegas visitors with a sampling of Nicklaus's design philosophy that extends beyond a single course identity to a curated compilation of his most celebrated design moments.

The Nevada Golf Association includes Bear's Best among its member facilities, and the course has attracted golfers who seek both the Nicklaus design experience and the conceptual novelty of playing recreations of holes from his most celebrated courses. The Las Vegas setting gives Bear's Best access to one of the world's most active golf tourism markets, whose combination of international visitors and domestic golf tourists creates demand for unique golf experiences that distinguish the destination from conventional course offerings. The semi-private format makes Bear's Best accessible to guests at the Summerlin resort complex and to the broader Las Vegas golf market, providing the Nicklaus design experience at a price point that rewards the quality investment of a course assembled from the architect's most celebrated design work.