Black Desert Resort in 90 seconds
For the second playing of the event in October, the tournament at Black Desert Resort will be known as the Bank of Utah Championship.
Trackman
Black Desert Resort, the final course designed by Tom Weiskopf, is ranked as the top public-access course in Utah.The course, built on a dramatic lava field, was designed with wide fairways to provide strategic options and avoid the hazardous terrain.Bank of Utah was introduced as the new title sponsor for the PGA Tour event held at the resort.Players have praised the course for its unique and scenic landscape, comparing it to courses in Hawaii.
Last year, the PGA Tour made its debut at the Black Desert Resort in St. George, Utah, the final course designed by World Golf Hall of Famer Tom Weiskopf (which was finished off by his architecture partner, Phil Smith).
The course has only been open for two years but has already rocketed to the top of Golfweek’s Best public-access courses in Utah. The layout has quickly climbed the rankings and is No. 1 in Utah on Golfweek’s Best list of public-access courses, No. 26 among all resort courses in the U.S. and No. 81 among all modern courses in the country.
As the Tour prepares to return to the dramatic property, here’s a look at what players said last year, what the ownership group hopes to do with the property, and what Weiskopf’s widow had to say last year at the debut.
The backstory of Black Desert Resort
Smith had seen the site before, while pursuing a job at nearby Entrada Country Club. That job went to another architect, but Smith was able to look a mile or so northwest across the landscape at the then-barren lava field. The site had been the source of speculation and investment for years, but no golf course had been built.
Lava has at times blasted and oozed out of the areas near Ivins — several of which have become national and state parks — for millions of years. The National Park Service reports that the latest volcanic eruption was 32,000 years ago from what is now Snow Canyon State Park, just a couple of miles north of the golf course. The site for Black Desert looks much more like something to be found in Hawaii, minus the ocean views, but with plenty of promise.
When word came that new investors were ready to move on the site, Smith and Weiskopf jumped at the job. Then came the hard part.
Just surveying the site was ankle-breaking work. On several occasions, Smith and Weiskopf walked the site, which was almost all lumpy and sharp lava with just a few trails.
Weiskopf — known as a hands-on architect who would throw himself into his course projects — was 76 years old, but he was determined to keep up.
“We started trekking, and he walked every bit of it with us,” Smith said. “I always credited Tom with his personal attention to projects, which was just not matched as far as many player-architects goes, so I was always able to get a lot of information from him as an architect working with him that was just invaluable for me.”
Knowing there would be lava in play, and knowing that the winds can reach 40 mph on the Black Desert site, Weiskopf and Smith came up with a routing that provided plenty of room to swing away. This serves two purposes: Width provides strategic options for skilled golfers choosing a route to a flag, and it also allows plenty of room to avoid the lava.
“Because we knew you’re pretty much dead outside of the turf, we wanted really wide fairways,” Smith said. “That’s why when you’re out there, you see those really super wide fairways with just a nice band of rough around them.”
Who is the new sponsor at Black Desert?
“After celebrating a successful return to Utah last year, the PGA Tour is pleased to introduce Bank of Utah as title sponsor of our event at Black Desert Resort, which received rave reviews from Tour players and families following the inaugural 2024 tournament,” Tyler Dennis, PGA Tour Chief Competitions Officer, said in a release in July.
“The Bank of Utah Championship is staged in one of the most unique settings found on the PGA Tour schedule, and we are eager to welcome a proud Utah company into the fold ahead of the second rendition later this fall.”
What did Tom Weiskopf’s widow say about Black Desert?
“He would have been just thrilled. Really thrilled,” said Laurie Weiskopf, widow of Tom, during last year’s event. “You know there was talk of a PGA Tour event potentially coming as he was building it, but Tom thought that was super aggressive thinking. It would be a surprise to him that it came in 2024. I’m not saying he’d be shocked, but this would have been a surprise to him.”
While Laurie admired how much love her husband had for each of the courses he designed, and he has over 70 to his name, she also knew his doggedness would make it difficult to slow down as he became more ill. In a famous story, Weiskopf tumbled into the black lava rocks at Black Desert while he was on there putting the project together. Laurie remembers her husband coming with bloodied hands, but he simply wouldn’t stop working on the project.
“The whole thing was scary for me,” she said. “He fell more than once. I sent him out with the best boots, but he came home with blood all over his hands and I had gloves for him the next day. But I knew he wasn’t going to stop. For him, this wasn’t work. Well, most of the projects weren’t work.”
Who won at Black Desert in 2024?
Matt McCarty, a former Santa Clara University golfer, smashed his drive within 3 feet of the hole at the drivable par-4, 14th green at Black Desert Resort to set up an eagle en route to posting a final-round 4-under 67 on Sunday and winning the inaugural Black Desert Championship in Ivins, Utah.
“I knew if I played well this week after last week then I could maybe have a chance but to do it like this? I don’t know how you could expect this, to be honest,” he said.
McCarty won three times in a span of six events on the Korn Ferry Tour to earn a promotion to the PGA Tour and in just his second start in the big leagues, he returned to the winner’s circle with a 72-hole total of 23-under 261 and a three-shot victory over Stephan Jaeger.
“Winning sometimes just seems like it kind of happens, especially lately,” McCarty said. “When it rains it pours right now for me.”
McCarty, who opened with a bogey-free 62, grabbed the lead with a third-round 64 and entered the final round with a two-stroke advantage. All week long, the left-hander reminded himself that if he could win on the Kerry Ferry Tour, why couldn’t he do the same on the PGA Tour? On Sunday, he experienced nerves just as he had during his previous trips to the winner’s circle only this time they didn’t subside; they kept building, he said. It didn’t hurt that he added a birdie right out of the gate at the first and seventh before a bogey at No. 12 cut his lead to one stroke. But the eagle at 14 gave McCarty a three-stroke cushion and he tacked on two more birdies at Nos. 16 and 18, sandwiched between a three-putt bogey at 17 and cruised to his maiden title on the PGA Tour.
What the managing partner of Black Desert thinks
Golfweek caught up with Patrick Manning, the managing partner of Black Desert Resort, during last year’s event. Manning is a real estate development veteran, with more than three decades of experience and somewhere in the neighborhood of $8 billion in real estate sales under his belt.
Here’s what he had to say about the future of the resort.
“I thought we need to step up our entertainment game, right? And so we are exploring the idea of an arena. Can we have a concert venue and a place to play sports that can swing into convention space? Is there a way to do that? Some stories came out and that was unfortunate because it was exploratory. We literally haven’t hired a consultant. We haven’t asked anybody to draw plans. Someone asked me about it and I just said, ‘Hey it’s something we might do, and we might not do.’ It’s not that we’re stepping forward or stepping back. It’s just one of those things. Like I might buy a car, but I might not.
“The old saying is if you build it, they’ll come. But that’s not what we’re doing. They’re here. There are twice as many visitors coming here than there are to Park City. And look how many resorts Park City has. And so we just did one large one that can take care of the people who are already coming here. So we want to provide the best experience. We’re finding out, testing this, seeing how people respond to certain things.
“We want it to evolve and then if a concert venue makes sense, then we’ll go out and test and see if the community and the state want it. And if they do and it makes sense, then we’ll build it. But we’re just keeping our ear to the ground, listening to people. We don’t want to get in a room and say this is what Black Desert wants to be. We want to be out there listening to people who tell us what they’re looking for.”
Which holes stand out at Black Desert?
There is a solid mix of holes. The opener is a medium-length par 4 that introduces all the landscapes from a high point, then the layout dives into the lava. There are two drivable par 4s, Nos. 5 and 14. From the back tees the par 3s range from 151 yards to 202, including No. 17 with a rumpled but smaller green that pays homage to the Postage Stamp at Royal Troon in Scotland, where Weiskopf won the 1973 British Open.
The par-3 third hole plays downhill to a green with a bunker inside the putting surface, similar to No. 6 at Riviera in California. The par-5 seventh features islands of lava in the middle of the fairway where most players would want to lay up on their second shots, the green sitting above and to the left behind walls of lava that pinch in. The 18th is a classic risk/reward par 5, allowing players to bite off what they dare as the fairway bends left beyond desert scrub and more lava.
It’s frequently risk versus reward throughout Black Desert. Challenge the lava at the edges to gain a strategic advantage, or tack safely around it. Make great players think while providing safer passage for the rest of us.
“We certainly designed it to challenge the best players in the world,” Smith said, noting that yardage has been added to a few holes at the Tour’s request. “That’s something Tom and I did throughout our careers together. We always designed golf courses with that possibility in mind. Think about TPC Scottsdale (also designed by the pair), where one week of the year it’s got to challenge the best players in the world but 99 percent of the time, it’s a resort course. So you’ve got to be playable.
What did players say about Black Desert?
Here’s what a number of players said last year:
Zac Blair: The scenery out here is pretty insane. I think it’ll look amazing on TV and everything like that. Pretty interested to kind of see what the scores are like and what it plays like in tournament conditions.
So I think everyone is excited. But also kind of learning what to do and where to go and how to direct people the right way and everything. So it’s gone well so far. Hopefully, we continue and have a good week and everything goes according to plan I guess.
I think just the way all the lava rock is and it’s not hazard, just kind of lost ball, it’s not really like anything else. So it’s kind of some places you might go and might be hazard or you might go to Arizona and hit it in the desert and you can still find it and chip it out.
Here, you’re not going to find it most of the time. Especially in the rocks. So I think it’s very unique, very different. People are all kind of seeing it and learning it for the first time.
There is definitely a lot to kind of see out there. You know, I think it’ll take a few rounds to really start understanding the places where you do want to take that risk. You got par-5s, like No. 9, that the second shot is virtually like you have to hit the green or maybe the bunker and you could get lucky.
Mike Weir: I think people are blown away by the property. Obviously the scenery hits them first when they get down here, such a unique landscape. I had a chance to play the course late spring and once this summer. We were down here for a family reunion-type thing. We buzzed over and had a chance to play.
And it’s incredible how much better it’s gotten even in a short period of time. The grounds staff here, the superintendent, they’ve done an incredible job. It’s like carpet out there, the fairways. The greens are great. It was playing really fast when I played it in the summer, so the ball was really chasing out. It’s not doing that now. I was thinking that the course might play a little bit short, but it’s not playing that way. It’s playing a little bit longer.
Jay Don Blake: You look at the terrain, it’s kind of a desert kind of terrain around this community. There’s a lot of people that have asked me, where did all the lava rock come from. They think they actually brought it in to create the golf course with lava rock. But about three miles up the road just kind of up one of the valleys, there’s a couple volcanos, which that’s probably where it came from.
I mean, having the lava in this terrain, territory, a lot of the community didn’t even know this was even part of what it was going to be, the uniqueness of it. Then you’ve got the red cliffs kind of north of us and to the sides.
We used to go to a place called Tuacahn up in the canyon before the course was even built, and it was kind of a hard road to get up to it. And things started snowballing, just the beauty it has everywhere you look. You’ve got the mountains in the distance. And bentgrass is not really a grass that’s normal for a hot climate kind of areas. And for what they’ve done to keep this golf course in great shape in the condition it’s in, I haven’t seen really a dead spot yet anywhere.
And throw the white sand out with the green grass, and then you’ve got the lava rock just right off the edge of the grass, it’s a very unique kind of style of golf course for this desert kind of climate. A lot of people have made the comment, I feel like I’m in Hawai’i playing on some of the courses.
I mean, it’s just beautiful. I don’t know how they can really explain — I think anybody can see how unique it is, the way it’s been laid out and through all the lava and designed the way it is. Tom Weiskopf did a great job and had a great vision of how he wanted to make it happen.
I was a little leery at first when they started talking about a golf course out here because I already knew the terrain and what it was going to be like. I was like, how are they going to get dirt to be on top of lava rock and have enough to where all of a sudden you put water to it and then you get a sink hole that could be a mile down below.
But what they’ve done is make a spectacular golf course and picked a great location for the beauty, and they’re trying to finish up this resort that’s great for the community. It’s going to be — they’ve got bigger dreams that go way beyond my imagination.
The golf course is very unique and beautiful, and the scenery everywhere you look is spectacular. I’ve never heard any players really say anything negative about it yet, so I think they all like it and enjoy it.
Nick Taylor: I think it’s great to be able to disengage from what you’re doing and look around you. We’re lucky to play a lot of beautiful places around the country, but this is very unique in that sense. Yeah, I think it will be a good distraction, a way to get away from in between the shots.
When I think desert, I think I default to TPC Scottsdale or next week in Vegas. But with the lava rock around, it’s not really a playable desert. Yeah, there’s so many things about this course that are unique. It’s a lot of fun to come here.
What is there to do in St. George, Utah?
Once known primarily as a sleepy Mormon outpost, St. George has become a vibrant destination for golfers and those who love to sightsee.
We spent 48 hours in the up-and-coming locale, and here are the major takeaways.
