Badlands Golf Club isn’t bad. It’s just designed that way.
The 27-hole track, tucked behind the Queensridge towers in Summerlin, is known for its tight green fairways, moonscape hazard areas and something that really gets your attention when chasing down a lost ball: rattlesnake warning signs.
Badlands may not be regarded as the best course, but it’s likely the most revered. If you sampled tourists, it would be no surprise if a plurality said the “Desperado,” “Diablo” and “Outlaw” nines epitomize the experience of playing here.
Why? Let us count the ways.
First, it’s a target course. Patience and precision trump gripping and ripping. You may find yourself standing between the tee markers and deciding between clubs, a driver in one hand and a 7-iron in the other. What to do? What to do?! At Badlands, vacillating and second-guessing are as much a part of your day as are drinking and cursing.
Second, it’s unforgiving. What, you thought the “Badlands” name was ironic? Not even a little. This course is infamous for its traps and its treachery, where one bad bounce turns pars into bogeys, bogeys into doubles and doubles into a pitching wedge snapped over your knee.
Third, it’s rocky. Venture a yard off the rough, and you’ll be hitting your next shot from a veritable quarry mine, assuming quarry mines had scrub brush and tumbleweeds. Trickling into the rocks is certain death; you’re better off landing there on the fly, because you might get a lucky ricochet back onto the fairway.
If you haven’t had the pleasure and pain of playing Badlands, you’d better run. EHB Companies, developers of the nearby Tivoli Village shopping and dining complex, bought the course in 2015, leaving its future in flux. EHB may tear up the course and replace it with luxury housing.
Until then, here’s a primer:
• Toughest hole: Diablo No. 9 (par 4, 473 yards). The good news is the green is huge. The bad news is, well, everything else. Off the tee, from which you must hit driver, left is bad, right is worse, and short is death. If you’re lucky — and good — you will have an approach of 200 yards. Club up, because there’s a Venus Fly Trap of a waste area ready to swallow any ball that fails to fly far enough.
• Easiest hole: Outlaw No. 2 (par 3, 151 yards). The oval-shaped green is so large you could play Australian rules football on it. And it’s only 130 yards away ... from the tips. Enough said.
• Best hole: Desperado No. 7 (par 4, 374 yards). When players who have played Badlands think Badlands, they think this. The tee shot demands surgical accuracy and power. It takes 200-plus yards to carry all the crap. Your approach is downhill — and if not blind, it’s partially sighted — to a two-tiered green.
Roger Snow is a senior vice president at Scientific Games.