Ladera Golf Club

Ladera Golf Club is the brainchild of best mates Irving Azoff and Eddy Cue. Perhaps not household names to the average punter but you will know Mr Azoff's work at TicketMaster and Mr Cue's work at Apple where we delivered the well-known platform, Apple iTunes.

Ladera - An Elite Private Members Golf Club

The passion project is owned by the two families with reports of 40 non-equity members already on board in early 2024. Published reports suggest a cap of 50 members with only between 8 and 25 allowed on the property on any given day. Some of the heavy hitters that will play the course after landing at the private runway a few miles from the course range from business tycoons to celebrities, notably Harry Styles.

The motivation for the club came about from the overcrowding at their other private golf club memberships (for example, Madison Club in La Quinta where the Kardashian's are reportedly members). A similar story is told regarding the creation of Swinley Forest, where members never wanted to wait on the 1st tee so an elite course with a small membership was the only reasonable solution! $40 million was the reported price tag for the golf courses with extras like infrastructure, lodging and amenities on top... no corners were cut in its conception, development or delivery.

Location & Contrasts at Ladera Golf Club

The golf course sits on 300 acres that was formerly a flat lemon grove south of Coachella and an hour's drive from central Palm Springs. Interestingly, the site has retained 50 acres of citrus and mango trees.

The last golf course to be built in the immediate area littered with desert golf opulence was Clive Clark's Eagle Falls Golf Club in 2008. Contrasting with the other golf offerings on the doorstep is the fact the course is designed to be walkable with no homes or building plots to be seen on the masterplan.

Transformed with a heavy hand, the result is not extravagant or visibly manufactured. The site is intersected by barrancas that serve as strategic design elements and practically shed and channel water during rare desert deluges. Gil Hanse and the team hand-sketched the layout before getting to work, showing an amazing ability to see the result whilst still a lemon grove... Reportedly the most dirt moved by Hanse and team for any project, they were heavy-handed but left a soft touch.

Ladera Golf Club Architectural Overview

The routing is reminiscent of Muirfield. The outward nine holes are laid out clockwise on the perimeter of the rectangular site with the inward nine routed in the counter-clockwise direction. Gil Hanse commented in a Golf Digest interview of being inspired by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw's work at Sand Hills with regards to 'diagonals' off tees. The orientation of fairways and bordering barrancas gives Cape strategy and allows players to bite off as much as they can chew...

Overall, the fairways are wide and kept short with edge-to-edge, single-height mowing lines that bleed into native grasses and sand-laden barrancas. The 1st and 18th share a fairway with the 9th and 10th also doing the same.

The outward nine works around the boundary of the property in a clockwise orientation with three one-shot holes coming on the 3rd, 6th, and 8th. Both nines return to the clubhouse at the turn. Routed on the interior of the property and working in the counterclockwise direction, there are six changes in direction tacking back and forth. The par 3's on the back nine come on 12 and 16 but the 15th is a short par 4 that will tempt better players to play it as a par 3... the epitome of a half-par hole.

The bunkers are interesting with many placed on the sides of the expansive fairways. On the 4th and 10th, diagonal hazards run into the fairways like the thin end of a wedge... making these cross hazards perfectly placed at proper angles to the line of play. Green sites also show impressive variety - some are bordered by boundless bunkers, the 7th and 8th being good examples. Others have no bunkers at all, the 4th stands out in this regard. Some greens have massive run-offs and swales while still others lie hard against native ground on just one side.

The 400-yard driving range has a practice putting green and 7 target greens surrounded by bunkers off grass tees. Ladera Golf Club has a nine-hole course on the north side of the property.

Construction of Ladera Golf Club

The project was planned and constructed by Golf Projects International (GPI). GPI are well known for delivering high-end projects such as Bel-Air Country Club in California, Shadow Creek in Las Vegas, Yas Links in Abu Dhabi, Nine Bridges in South Korea, and Loch Lomond in Scotland. La-Bar Golf Renovations was also involved with a valuable addition to the project.

Seed King Enterprises (seed supplier to Los Angeles Country Club and Pebble Beach Golf Links amongst hundreds of others) were involved on the agronomy side. A former lemon grove, the trees had to be removed before being re-sown with warm-season native grasslands. Seed and plugs were used to establish 85 acres of purple three-awn native grass, blue grama, side oats grama, and little bluestem. The 25 acres of barranca (a steep-sided ditch, gulley or canyon) were seeded with fine fescues and warm-season grasses. In addition, 10 acres of wildflower meadows and native shrubland were re-established.