The new Black Desert Resort in Southwest Utah is set to host both a PGA Tour and LPGA event in the … [+]
It’s not often a public golf course lands a professional event as it first opens for play. It’s downright unprecedented to be tabbed as the host of both a PGA Tour event and an LPGA tournament immediately upon its debut, but that’s the case with one of the most intriguing new golf destinations in the game.
Black Desert Resort is bringing professional golf back to Utah for the first time in more than six decades and the broader tourism impacts of the $2 billion project have even greater implications in St. George and the Greater Zion region.
The new course at Black Desert is as dramatic as they come, its brilliant green fairways winding through jet black lava rock and surrounded by long-range vistas, including dramatic red rocks and mountains in the surrounding state and national parks. It’s the final of 73 designs from former British Open champion and four-time Masters runner-up Tom Weiskopf, the World Golf Hall of Famer who died of pancreatic cancer in August 2022.
Black Desert is the final course design of the late Tom Weiskopf.
The mega-resort will host the PGA Tour’s eponymously-named Black Desert Championship in fall of 2024, bringing the world’s best golfers back to Utah for the first time since the 1963 Utah Open Invitational. In 2025, the second year of Black Desert’s four-year agreement with the PGA Tour, Utah’s biggest resort will also be home to an LPGA event for the first time since the 1964 Riverside Ladies Open.
For the St. George and Greater Zion region, the economic impact of hosting multiple professional events is expected to top $60 million a year.
The area is known for its stunning natural beauty — in particular nearby Zion National Park, Snow Canyon State Park, and Red Cliffs National Conservation Area.
But it was golf that first helped draw in tourism and transform a desert gas station stop, as the City of St. George in the 1960’s developed the nine-hole course of Dixie Red Hills. Today, there are 13 courses and counting in this scenic southwest corner of Utah, which is about a two-hour drive from Las Vegas, Nevada.
The course at Black Desert weaves through ancient black lava fields and has national and state park … [+]
Black Desert, developed by Reef Capital Partners, is set to take the region to an entire other level. And the professional golf tournaments will serve as a national showcase.
The championship course, which also has a 36-hole illuminated putting course for day or night play, sits on part of a 600-acre resort and entertainment complex that spans three cities: St. George as well as Ivins and Santa Clara.
The first stage of development includes a 700-room hotel with a convention center, five restaurants, a beach, pool and spa, but the resort’s long-range vision calls for over 3,000 rooms and residences in total, more than 20 restaurants, a concert venue, a waterpark, a wellness spa, expansive retail space with a pedestrian-only boardwalk, and more than six miles of public hiking trails that wind through 200+ preserved acres. There’s even an underground parking garage with nearly 2,000 stalls.
Construction on the main resort center is expected to be completed by the time the property hosts the PGA Tour event in fall of 2024, with additional development scheduled out for the next several years.
The vistas at Black Desert are expansive, ranging far beyond the 600+ acre property.
Black Desert Resort is set to change the game in southwest Utah, joining Pebble Beach and Tiburon as the only courses in the country to be selected as host of both a PGA Tour FedEx Cup event and an LPGA tournament. It was golf that helped bring more tourism to this corner of the Beehive State six decades ago and now a drama-filled new course befitting the national park surrounds is the centerpiece of a project that’s bound to further raise the region’s national profile.
