As it is for we humans resident in our wide, brown, girt-by-sea land, golf in Australia is often coastal or near to it. Yet outside two notable exceptions in north-east Tasmania and a much-anticipated new one near the airport in Hobart, our coastal golf is not deemed “links” golf, as our Scottish forebears would have it.

Instead, golf hereabouts is generally what the Old World calls “parkland”-style golf, with fairways lined by scrub, eucalypts and deciduous imports, and riven by streams and lakes, with the odd garden bed for aesthetics.

And that, friends, is largely it.

Yes, New South Wales GC is among the best in the world, but it has no dunes which “link” the course with the beach and the arable land further in.

From there, as human habitation sneaks sporadically inwards towards our Red Centre, so too do our “desert” golf courses follow suit, sparse in number. And, with apologies to Kalgoorlie, Alice Springs and so many Nullarbor sandscrapes, they are largely, relatively modest.

They photograph nicely and they are fine fun to play, but they are flat and they are very often very hot, and even in Tennant Creek there are wiser things to do than whack a ball among the scorpions on a summer afternoon. 

And thus, as a rule, Australians don’t generally “do” desert golf.

Serket - about 20 minutes from the Vegas strip - is a cracking and good fun rollick through the aroyos. PHOTO: Serket GC

So, when you’re on tour of the United States for the National Rugby League’s nascent toe-dip into the American sports gambling market – in the form of four games, back-to-back, at Allegiant Stadium in March - and you drive an hour-and-change out of Las Vegas and into the Nevada desert Badlands surrounding Mesquite, and you gaze down upon the artisan-cut first fairway at Wolf Creek, with its luxuriant green landing zone and blinding-white bunkers framed by so much rough and rocky desert-brown, it’s golf, though not as you’ve ever known it.

It looks like Joondalup’s Quarry Course if it was created by Salvadore Dali. On Mars. 

Then Wolf Creek’s second hole says, Hold my root beer! Have a go at this, baby. To which the third hole says, Please. You think that was funky? Have a go at this! And the fourth hole says, Pfft! Amateurs! This baby is ridiculous!

And so on, and onwards you roll, each subsequent hole trying to outdo the last for theatre, bravado, fun and flat-out ridiculousness. And, you might, as I did, find yourself gushing into your phone’s voice memo app.

 

@mattclearygolfaustralia

 

♬ son original - MASTER LYRICS

 

“This joint is flat-out unbelievable,” I gushed. “It’s like a madman’s dream of a golf course; like golf in a Roadrunner cartoon. It’s mad like root beer. It’s interplanetary. It’s like nothing you’ve known before. It’s a kaleidoscope of colour, a textural mish-mash. 

“And it just comes at you, hole after hole, an assault on the senses, on what you’ve previously deemed possible. There are mighty, long-drops, there are heroic carries over tundra, there are chasms of green-space, there are rivers and bubbling brooks and sheer rock walls.

"And it should not be, not out here in the desert.

"It’s like it just shouldn’t be.” 

But it is. And if you’re over there in Las Vegas for the rugby league, or for any reason 
at all, you just must play Wolf Creek. 

There’s a couple other funky ones, too.

COOL CASCATA

Like much of what one encounters on a trip to the United States, so much of what we think we know is dictated by the ubiquitous nature of American show business. Many would find it impossible to travel to Milwaukee without thinking of Laverne and Shirley doing their best at the Shotz Brewery, for instance.  

And you cannot play golf in the desert lands of Nevada without thinking of the spot Forrest Gump finally gave up running, and where those highway warriors, Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, held – perhaps still hold – their one-sided life-and-near-death struggle.

What’s cooler still about playing at Cascata GC is that you may see a Road Runner – a small and nippy flightless bird. You might also see a chipmunk. The coyotes are stealthier, however, and certainly don’t come near half-cut golfers in loud pants and lime-green Canberra Raiders hats.

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Cascata sits 1000 metres above the Las Vegas desert valley in the foothills of the River Mountain Range. It’s like a posher version of Wolf Creek. More refined. Not as funky, but very, very cool. It’s a proper golf course. A golfer’s golf course. It is beyond gorgeous.

There are muscular Desert Bighorn Sheep in the hills; mighty, goat-looking beasts with fat, twisty horns that could buck the buck out of you. They are the national mammal of Nevada, and quite striking.

The hills are more around you than they are at Wolf Creek. They are balder hills, enveloping, with red-fawn-claret hues, and many types of pink, rose and salmon. They are as rocky as Bullwinkle, while the fairways are mint.

The signature hole, they say, is the seventh; a downhill par-3 finely framed by those same red rock hills, bunkers left, right and front, the latter one with a big yellow mound in the middle, while left is a ravine and a stream. It was 110m and played maybe 95m the day we played, but it remained a hard-won par.

While Wolf Creek is more fun, Cascata maybe feels like the better golf course. Its routing feels more mature, less fun-park. Still cracking fun – you’ll enjoy running the ball through arroyos. The fairways are cut pleasingly in light-and-dark shades and run through the aridness like a green velvet tongue. 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Cascata is framed around the desert and is of the desert. And while it is not as spectacular as Wolf Creek, it is still spectacular. The pictures are great, but you can’t imagine how spectacular until you’re looking at it, until you’re among it. You will say the word spectacular so often, you’ll realise you need a new word for spectacular.

“Astonishing” maybe comes closest, but you’ll feel the need to invent something better.

FUN CITY

My tour group and myself, a typical, 10-prong posse of middle-aged club golfers and Canberra Raiders fans who – to quote Toby Keith, are not as good as we once were, but are as good once as we ever were … or so we’d like to think – visited the bright lights of Las Vegas to catch the NRL’s quadruple-header footy-fest.

And, it is fair to say, we lived large.

At Allegiant Stadium, our suite overlooked the 20-metre line. We had unlimited fish tacos and Homer Simpson-sized donuts. There was a donut-making station, with sweet sauces and sprinkles.

There was unlimited booze. And not just tins of generic beer and supermarket vino, but Scotch whiskey and Grey Goose Vodka, as much as you could fit in a cranberry surprise.

We ate for Australia.

 

@mattclearygolfaustralia

 

♬ original sound - Matt Cleary

 

At super-flash Capital Grille we enjoyed the mother-of-all rib-eye steaks and drank pinot noir from Chile. Incredible food. We enjoyed mighty breakfasts at Bellagio and luxuriant, apres-golf, long lunches.

Cultural fun-fact: everything that’s filling between bread – doesn’t matter: rolls, baps, brioche buns - is a “sandwich”. There’s a sandwich called a French Dip that’s delicious, slow-cooked red meats between a roll, slathered with mustard, and which comes with a meaty broth into which you dip your roll. Why that’s French, I could not tell you, but it’s a very bloody good sandwich.

We saw an ice hockey game; Las Vegas Knights versus New Jersey Devils, which 
was two hours of music and lightshows and super-quick pucks shooting about, and 
skilled athletes scrapping for the precious like ninjas with giant chopsticks.

It wasn’t Canberra Raiders defeating New Zealand Warriors 30-8 in round one of the NRL, 
but it was quite entertaining.

One of our crew, Damo, turned 60 the first day of the trip. At every bar we entered for the entire week, it was announced that it was Damo’s birthday, and he was subsequently feted by locals and bought drinks.

The peak came when he was serenaded by one of the duelling pianists at the famous Harrah’s Las Vegas Piano Bar, a talented man who sang a song that described Damo as an “asshole” many times. It was funny.

 

@mattclearygolfaustralia #UpTheMilk ♬ original sound - 𝙂𝙀𝙀𝙐𝙋 𝙈𝙀𝘿𝙄𝘼 🇦🇺

 

On the Las Vegas Strip we spent enjoyable hours in the finely named Beer Park. We walked up and down Fremont Street, bypassing the Heart Attack Grill where patrons who weigh over 300 pounds (160 kilograms) can eat for free, and which serves a hamburger with eight patties called an “Octuple Bypass”. 

We threw craps and snake eyes in the casinos. We flew over Hoover Dam in a helicopter. We bought a great many things emblazoned with the logos of Las Vegas professional sports teams.

We did not: watch Cirque du Soleil; drive an ATV on a desert track; kayak the Colorado River; shoot an Uzi in a firing range; shoot an Uzi from a helicopter; eat exciting chillis; see the Grand Canyon; see the Grand Canyon in a helicopter; hit balls at Top Golf Las Vegas; get a tattoo; get married by Elvis. 

We did play some of the great fun golf of the world.

ELECTRIC SERKET

Serket GC (formerly Rio Secco), 20 minutes from the Strip among a seemingly abandoned gated community full of empty mansions, has shades of the Joondalup “Quarry” nine about it, if Joondalup ran through a seemingly abandoned gated community full of empty mansions. 

Many of Serket’s fairways run the length of “arroyos” which is the Spanish term for a “steep-sided gully formed by the action of fast-flowing water in an arid or semi-arid region, found chiefly in the south-western U.S”, as the terrifying research tool known as artificial intelligence will very quickly tell you.

The fairways are bordered by bone-coloured grass left to grow old and dormant, and a little longer than the primary cut. It’s effectively well-maintained fawny-white wheat. Outside that will be the cart path. And outside that is bandit country; jagged land upon which your ball will not ever land softly. Indeed, it can jag around like an atom.

The “rough” outside the prescribed landing zone is all rocks and gravel and cactus. It’s coyote and scorpion country, oft-piste and prickly, Badlands not conducive to the health of your golf ball. Indeed, so barren is it that locals advise you do not enter these areas but rather treat them like lateral – and literal – hazards. 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Naturally, being half-cut colonial types as good once as we ever was, something-something, we did not comply with this advice and ventured in with six-irons whacking the ground to frighten reptiles and stinging beasties.

And we were rewarded for our bravery-slash-buffoonery by not only finding our golf balls and advancing them somewhere back onto the grass without penalty but also, on most occasions, emerging with upwards of half-a-dozen, once-scuffed Titleist Pro-V1s. 

True facts. And it was lots more fun (and profitable) playing for angles out of the tundra than taking a drop in the short-cut wheat. Particularly given so many previous profligates were leaving once-whacked ProV1s lying about, each venture off the cut stuff became an Easter hunt for shiny white gold.

The par-3s are great fun, and not because I parred three of the four and hit the green 
on the other one before rolling in a big-breaking 40-foot birdie, though that certainly helped. 

 


 

But rather for fun factor. The par-3s - indeed many of the holes – begin high on mesas and travel down to amphitheatres of rugged rock.

Consider the 180-metre par-3 12th hole which heads over a chasm of death and has further shades of Joondalup’s Quarry course about it. In fact, the whole course is a bit like Joondalup’s Quarry nine, if it had views of the Las Vegas skyline and beyond that to the majestic Sierra Nevada ranges. 

And you should go to the course formerly-known as Rio Secco, because it is a beaut.

BUYER BEWARE

Las Vegas has been Las Vegas since 1905, when rail owners auctioned some land that was a rail stop between Los Angeles and Salt Lake City.

In 1931, during the Great Depression, Las Vegas underwent a population and economic boom when they legalised gambling and “quickie” divorces, and began construction of the Hoover Dam. 

And the money flowed in with the water.

The Mafia took hold, then billionaire Howard Hughes. The buildings and casinos in the famous Vegas Strip are now owned by so many corporations.

Today it’s a gambling and entertainment megatropolis (population 679,000) which welcomes upwards of 40 million visitors a year.

And, every day, it takes in money like the oil refinery in Mad Max II: ka-jung, ka-jung, ka-jung. 

 

@mattclearygolfaustralia

Sorry Barnbougle,  Cape Wickham, and New South Wales, this is the most ridiculous, stunning golf course I have played. Carved from the desert by a genius and/or madman.

♬ original sound - Matt Cleary

 

While there was once gold in them thar hills – the magnificent Sierra Nevada ranges – today the gold flows from the punters into the pockets of the corporations that run the Bellagio, Trump Tower and the outlet shop for Bubba Gump stuff.

Vegas is a license to suck money from punters who, perhaps genuinely, believe that they can be among the one percent who leave with more money than with which they walked in. The rest of us? Fleeced like a big-horned sheep. And roughly.

Example? Our tour group stayed in the Bellagio, and I was careful not to go mad on the mini-bar. In six nights I partook of four bottles of sparkling water, three Snickers bars, two tins of Heineken, and two packets of pistachios.

And my bill for these 10 items – and you may think I am making it up but I am not – was $332.

To withdraw $100 from the Bellagio’s ATM cost $40. Three Bubba Gump hats cost $225. Said (admittedly, one-hundred-percent, goddamned delicious) rib-eye was $150.

In Las Vegas they charge like a stampede of so many wounded bulls because, simply, they can. Whatever they charge, they assume you will pay. You are not there to make love with spiders, as they say.

Cracking fun town golf, footy and carousing, though.