Bighorn Golf Club - The Canyons

The Canyons Course at Bighorn Golf Club sits 1,000 feet above the Coachella Valley floor with sweeping views of the Santa Rosa Mountains, featuring wide fairways and generous greens guarded by 113 bunkers aggregating 2.7 acres of sand. Tom Fazio moved more than eight million cubic yards of earth to create a layout surrounded by waterfalls, creeks, and towering palm trees.

The Canyons Course at Bighorn Golf Club in Palm Desert represents the second chapter in the development of one of the Coachella Valley's most celebrated private golf communities. Bighorn was conceived by R.D. Hubbard, a private developer, who envisioned a golf community built at an architectural standard that had rarely been attempted in the desert. The first course — the Mountains Course — opened in 1991, designed by Arthur Hills. Hubbard then retained Tom Fazio to design the Canyons Course, which opened in December 1998 and brought the club to its full 36-hole configuration.

Tom Fazio approached The Canyons as a deliberate counterpart to the rugged, dramatic Mountains Course. Where the Mountains layout climbs aggressively into the Santa Rosa Mountain foothills, The Canyons occupies a more expansive desert floor terrain, featuring wide, rolling fairways and a more open character. The course sits below the Santa Rosa Mountains and above the valley floor, at an elevation that provides sweeping views while allowing Fazio to route holes through a series of natural desert washes and dry canyons that give the course its name. The generous fairways mask a genuine strategic complexity — Fazio employed multiple approach angles, false-front greens, and extensive water features that demand careful club selection from players of all abilities. The construction of The Canyons required Fazio's team to move more than eight million cubic yards of material to create the elevated plateaus, waterfalls, and dramatic green sites that define the layout.

Natural desert washes were used wherever possible to frame corridors and create natural rough areas that reduce maintenance while preserving the authentic Sonoran Desert aesthetic. Desert plants — including saguaro cactus, palo verde trees, and ocotillo — were transplanted and preserved throughout the routing. The result is a course surrounded by waterfalls, creeks, and towering palm trees that feel integral to the landscape rather than imposed on it. The back nine of The Canyons builds to a demanding three-hole conclusion that defines the course's character. The par-5 16th climbs in altitude toward the Santa Rosa ridgeline, the par-3 17th requires a carry over a canyon with the valley stretching below, and the par-4 18th plays dramatically downhill to a finishing green that stages a sweeping panoramic backdrop.

Bighorn's facilities complement both courses with a comprehensive practice facility and caddie-first service standards that distinguish the club in the private golf market. The club maintains a membership policy that limits total rounds, ensuring that both courses remain in championship condition throughout the playing season. Fazio's design team returned on several occasions for bunker refinements and green enhancements in the years following the opening, a reflection of Bighorn's commitment to keeping The Canyons at the standard its design and construction warranted. The Canyons Course has been ranked among the best private courses in California by Golf Digest, which placed it 27th in the state in its 2025-26 rankings. The combination of The Canyons and the Mountains Course at a single facility gives Bighorn Golf Club among the admired 36-hole private golf experiences in the American Southwest, a distinction that has endured since Fazio completed his work on the property in the late 1990s.