PGA West: Pete Dye Mountain

When Pete Dye was building the Mountain Course at La Quinta in 1980, he knew that even if the layout wasn't ideal working through resort corridors, the holes would make up for it with the views, shelved against the base of the Santa Rosa Mountains, their stony facades towering above. Holes like four, five, six, 14 and 15 play so tight to the mountains that the walls of rock are in play and care must be taken not to hit them.

The design is premium 1980s Dye, desert version, with long stips of sand paralleling fairways and plateau putting surfaces set above moat bunkers. The downhill par-3 16th, playing from a platform tee in the foothills over a field of boulders to a drop-shot green surrounded in sand and rock, is one of the most memorable in California but nearly every holes requires high, precision approach shots into the elevated greens.

The Mountain Course is part of the vast PGA West conglomorate of courses that now numbers nine. The headliner is the Stadium Course, the evil West Coast twin of TPC Sawgrass and home course of the PGA Tour's The American Express as well as several must-see TV Skins Games in the late 1980s. The Stadium Course should be on anyone's list who visits the Palm Springs/La Quinta area if for no other reason than to experience what was intended to be the hardest golf course in the country, as interpreted in the mid-80s by Dye and the Landmark Land Company developers (this was the mandate given to Dye at the time). Spoiler: it remains frightening in roughly the same proportion as most 80s slasher films still do.

But if you could only play one course at PGA West and it was the Mountain Course and not the Stadium or any of the others, you'd still leave feeling you got a taste of the best resort golf the Coachella Valley offers.