Hideaway (Clive Clark)

Hideaway Golf Club started out as the Country Club of the Desert back in the late 1990s before the Discovery Land property group stepped in to rescue the development when the original owners ran into financial difficulties.

Some might remember the news story back in September 2001 when the pagoda-style starter’s box from the Old Course at St Andrews was auctioned off for £50,000 to become something of a kitsch centrepiece for the golf project here in La Quinta.

After being dismantled, shipped to Los Angeles from Felixtowe via the Panama Canal, then transported to the Coachella Valley, the hut went into storage whilst the new owners built the private residential community at Hideaway before deciding what to do with it.

In the end, the starter’s box ended up at another Discovery Land property next door at The Madison Club, with California property developer John Hagen – who wrote a book about the saga in 2010 called “Play Away Please” – reckoning it had cost more than half a million dollars to transplant the hut from Fife to California.

There are two 18-hole layouts at Hideaway: one designed by and named after Pete Dye, the other laid out by and named after Clive Clark, and they both opened for play within a year of each other. The Clark track is the shorter but no less demanding of the two courses.

Anybody anticipating a British-style of design with this course can think again as it’s totally inspired by its Southern Californian surroundings, resulting in a multitude of bunkers, a number of cascading waterfalls and palm trees aplenty.