La‌ ‌Quinta (PGA West and Escena),‌ ‌CA‌ ‌Buddies‌ ‌Golf‌ ‌Trip‌ ‌

February 11, 2020 Off By BBF

La Quinta offers many things to many people. It’s an excellent destination for a buddies golf trip, a family trip or couples. While golf culture is clearly pervasive throughout the area, tennis is not far behind, and there are many things to keep people busy while husbands and boyfriends are hitting the links. In fact there is magnificent shopping in the area as well, so you will want to make sure you have paid down your credit cards.

Stadium Golf Course: PGA West — Famous Par 3 at the Stadium Course: PGA West

There are a couple of options to get into the area by plane. You have Palm Springs International airport, in the center of Palm Springs, or you can fly into Ontario Airport which is about an hour away from Palm Springs or an hour and 40 minutes to La Quinta. There are seemingly hundreds of golf courses in the area from Palm Springs to La Quinta and the area is well set up for tourists coming to enjoy some warm weather while they are snowed out back home. Keep in mind that the Palm Springs area is very spread out so you will need a rental car and a designated driver if you want to venture out of the La Quinta PGA West campus.

Norman Golf Course PGA West — Par 3 with forced carry: Norman Course PGA West

If it’s purely a golf buddies weekend you are looking for then heading south to La Quinta will pay off in spades. It’s likely best to center yourself in a VRBO in PGA West, as these are the courses you will likely want to play and it’s basically self contained so that you don’t really have to go anywhere if you don’t want to.

We stayed at a VRBO literally overlooking the driving range between the Nicklaus Course and the Stadium course. It was a 4 bedroom, 3 bath and is well set up for golfers. Luxurious for a foursome, yet it would swallow up 2 foursomes pretty well. It’s walking distance to the main clubhouse with lunch and dinner served at Arnie’s restaurant. The VRBO was well equipped with a gourmet kitchen, a grill (and will soon have a pool as well). In fact when you play the stadium course, you drive right by the back of the house and you can run your clubs up to the patio of it. You can see the house and negotiate to rent it here http://www.ashliesluxuryretreats.com/.

Be sure to make reservations in advance at Arnie’s as they will hold an entire empty patio for “reserved parties” that seemingly never come. The food at Arnie’s is very good, but the service is very inconsistent. Another option for a buddies dinner is to head about 20 minutes into Palm Desert. We had dinner at Sullivan’s steakhouse. The food was great, the service was good….perfect for a buddies dinner out on the town.

Escena Golf Course. Close to the airport good for a starter round

While not a bucket list golf trip, the golf is fantastic, and interestingly the courses we played all had a very distinct feel from one another-so you get a nice variety. Unless you live in Canada and do the winters in Palm Springs, the surgical strike trip would be to fly in as early as possible on a Friday, play Friday afternoon, Saturday and Sunday morning and fly out Sunday evening. I would play these courses more or less in the order below.

Bucket list rank (from 1 to 5 buckets): 3 Buckets
Spectacle/ visual: 7
History: 4
New/ancient: New
Playability : 7
Memorability : 6
Buddy-a-bility : 7
Service/etc: 6
Value: 5
Shopping: 7
Warm up facilities/Range: 8
Food & Drink: 7 Lots of great places to eat around the area. Both Escena and PGA West club houses are fantastic

About The Author

BBF

BBF or “Big Ball First” comes from a golf saying for hitting a shot fat. Or hitting the “big ball first” in that you hit the ground (the big ball) before hitting the golf ball. In the BBF blog, it’s a metaphor for traveling the planet, soaking in exclusive experiences, and pointing people to the Awesome, the Great, the Good, and the not so good out there. We’re hitting the big ball running with tales from international golf courses, with fine wine, fine food, did I mention golf…well, especially the ‘buddies bucket list golf trips’. The hope is that like minded people will enjoy the stories, and hopefully use it as a reference point. If this blog helps people prioritize the experiences they want to have on our planet then we will have succeeded on our mission. We only have so many go’s at “bucket list” travel experiences. Especially the bucket list buddies golf experiences. My hope is you can refine your experience based upon my learning, and take your “big ball first” experiences to the next level.