Mountain Falls

A relative distance from Nevada’s population centers, Mountain Falls Golf Club offers a relatively quiet break from the hustle and bustle of Las Vegas, but includes some of the city’s heroic school of golf architecture. Jack Nicklaus and Cal Olson didn’t let the course location — a desert near the California border — stop them from providing numerous water hazards.

The signature example is the closing hole, where a lake lurks on the left of the par four, and a butterfly green requires a safe approach to the right wing (straightforward into the green) or a dangerous one to the left (over the encroaching lake...or just playing it safe and praying for a two-putt par). The creek that flows ahead of the par three No. 14 is just a pleasant (or unpleasant, depending how you look at it) distraction from the true challenge of the hole, which is in its large, rolling green.

The club has embraced a no-overseeding stance, to maintain both water and firm fairways.