Ladera Golf Club

Set on 300 acres of former lemon groves and mango orchards at the base of the Santa Rosa Mountains, Ladera breaks every convention of Coachella Valley desert golf. Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner built the course without a single water feature or palm tree, instead sculpting dry arroyos and sweeping sandy gullies that mimic the region's natural desert washes. Generous fairways spanning 60 to 100 yards and an absence of formal rough encourage creative, ground-game golf in a landscape that feels ancient despite its 2023 opening.

Ladera Golf Club traces its origins to the vision of two prominent figures in American business and entertainment: Irving Azoff, the Los Angeles-based music industry executive whose career has shaped the modern entertainment landscape, and Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of services. Together, they set out to build a golf course unlike anything in the Coachella Valley -- a desert layout that rejected the conventional formula of emerald fairways, artificial lakes, and rows of imported palm trees. The result, which opened in 2023 on 300 acres of former lemon groves and mango orchards near Thermal, California, is a striking reimagination of what desert golf can be. To bring their vision to life, Azoff and Cue turned to Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner of Hanse Golf Course Design, the partnership that had already earned international acclaim for their work on the Olympic Course at Rio de Janeiro for the 2016 Summer Games. The instructions given to Hanse and Wagner were deceptively simple: no water features and no palm trees. Beyond those two constraints, the architects had complete creative freedom to transform the agricultural land into something extraordinary. The site presented both a challenge and an opportunity. Sitting at the base of the Santa Rosa Mountains, the property sloped approximately 140 feet from its high point near the mountains across what had been level farmland -- terrain that, while flat in its agricultural life, offered raw material for Hanse and Wagner to sculpt into something dramatic.

The most defining characteristic of Ladera is the network of dry arroyos that Hanse, Wagner, and their construction team carved through the property. These hand-sculpted gullies emulate the sandy, eroded channels that water rushes through during the desert's rare heavy rains, and they give the landscape a rugged, ancient quality that feels entirely natural despite being manufactured. By far the most earth that Hanse and Wagner have moved on any project, the shaping at Ladera created elevation changes, strategic hazards, and visual drama across a site that could have easily become monotonous in lesser hands. The arroyos serve multiple purposes: they frame holes, create forced carries, establish risk-reward decision points, and lend a sense of wild, untamed beauty that sets Ladera apart from every other course in the greater Palm Springs area. Hanse's design philosophy at Ladera drew on the wide-open, strategic model he admires at courses like Sand Hills Golf Club in Nebraska. The fairways at Ladera are remarkably generous, spanning 60 to 100 yards wide with no formal rough -- a departure from the target-golf approach that dominates most desert layouts. Instead of punishing wayward shots with thick rough or water hazards, Hanse built strategic diagonals off the tees that reward bold lines while offering safer alternatives for more cautious players. The course plays as a par 72 stretching to 7,705 yards from the championship tees, with a course rating of 77.7 and slope of 142.

Despite its considerable length, the generous fairways and firm, fast playing conditions make the course far more accessible than the raw numbers suggest. The grassing program at Ladera further reinforces the course's departure from convention. Rather than the wall-to-wall green turf typical of desert courses, Hanse and Wagner established 85 acres of native grasses including purple three-awn, blue grama, side oats grama, and little bluestem. These native plantings frame the playing corridors with textures and colors that shift with the seasons, lending Ladera an aesthetic more reminiscent of a Great Plains sand-based course than a Coachella Valley resort. Meanwhile, 50 acres of the original citrus and mango trees were retained, connecting the course to the agricultural heritage of the land and providing fragrant accents along certain holes. Several holes at Ladera have already earned reputations as standouts. The 210-yard par-3 twelfth features a Biarritz-style green with a pronounced swale at its rear, demanding precise distance control and an understanding of how the ball will react upon landing. The drivable par-4 fifteenth plays to an elevated, angled green that Hanse has said was modeled after an early version of the tenth hole at Riviera Country Club, before bunkers were added to that famous green complex.

The interplay of elevation, angle, and optical illusion on the fifteenth makes it a discussed short par fours in recent American course design. Beyond the championship eighteen, Ladera includes a nine-hole short course on the north side of the property, offering a more casual experience that is no less thoughtfully designed. The practice facilities are equally impressive, with a 400-yard driving range featuring grass tees and seven target greens surrounded by bunkers, along with a dedicated practice putting green. Ladera's impact on the golf architecture community was immediate. Golf Digest named it the Best New Private Course for 2023, recognizing the boldness of its design and the quality of its execution. Within three years of opening, it had become a discussed new course in America, a testament to what can happen when visionary owners give talented architects the freedom and resources to challenge convention. Hanse himself scored his first "real" hole-in-one at Ladera -- a moment that underscored the personal connection the architect feels to this particular canvas. For its members, Ladera offers a golf experience that feels both timeless and entirely modern -- a desert course that honors the land's natural character rather than fighting against it, where strategy and imagination matter more than brute force, and where every round unfolds against the dramatic backdrop of the Santa Rosa Mountains rising to the west.