For this answer, we turned to the author of our book Golf Las Vegas: The Ultimate Guide, Ken Van Vechten.
In a sure sign of the apocalypse, anyone can now play Wynn Golf Club. When this change was announced, I couldn’t help but wonder how much Cristal was spit up by the denizens of the Fairway Villas: "My lord, Rupert, what’s next? Al Czervik?"
Actually, anyone could previously play Wynn, as long as he or she was a hotel guest. Such a guest could pay $500 for the honor or play for "free," so long as he or she was the type who never touched luggage and was known across the house, simply, as Mr./Ms. Initial. What’s changed is the residency requirement, kinda like a green card for golfers, with the important type of green being that type of green, with no care to the country, or hotel, of origin.
That the veil of exclusivity was lowered ever so slightly —- not unlike what Steve Wynn did previously at Shadow Creek wherein non-casino-invited hotel guests could play in limited numbers and the price was cut in half (down from a freakin’ grand) —- hasn’t led to a run on the harem, or so the circumstantial evidence says. Why circumstantial? Well, because trying to get an actual number on the amount of play at Wynn has always been like trying to book a week-long stay in an MGM Mirage count room or searching for good video poker at a Harrah’s property. Does it matter? The visual tell is of a beautiful country path, not I-15 on Friday night.
Yet Wynn never was about rounds played or any care whatsoever that the vast majority of right-thinking people would absolutely cringe after getting a look at the sticker price. It’s a high-end casino amenity for people who are really serious about their gambling, really serious about their golf, or in most cases a good dose of both. It also gives Wynn (the guy) the biggest baddest backyard of any casino magnate and that’s one place Sheldon Adelson can never upstage him (at least until -- or if -- Wynn builds out the golf course with his planned convention center-megaresort, taking a cue back from Adelson).
Five Benjamins get you to the first tee, with gratis rental clubs and shoes (in case the baggage hatch of the G4 opened mid-flight). You get a caddy. You get on-course beverages and chow. You get blessed solitude in a parkland setting. The grass is perfect, the sand is perfect, the service follows suit. And in a design cue that’s now de rigueur from Rancho Palos Verdes to Miami’s Fairmont Turnberry Isle, there’s a mountain of water that makes most other courses’ wet features play like a water pistol in desperate need of a refill.
When Wynn opened, the pundits ran it right up to the top of the Wall of Acclaim. The course is that solid. That my reception is more muted stems from the fact that golf is about relativity. It’s about financial value as much as shot value. It’s about more than the first tee to the 18th green, and with two other $500 beasties in Vegas (actually, North Las Vegas and Boulder City), someone has to play third chair in this pricing symphony. That’s not a slam. It’s simply an indication of how superb is the entire package of experiences at Shadow Creek and Cascata and how strong are the top layers of Vegas golfdom.
Five hundred bucks?
It doesn’t take too many turns of an unfriendly card before several hours on the course don’t look like such a bad investment after all, so long as the Nassau doesn’t have too many zeros left of the decimal point.
