Buzz in the Beehive State as Black Desert Resort welcomes PGA Tour back to Utah

IVINS, Washington County — The late Tom Weiskopf was never one to mince words inside the ropes and in the broadcast booth, or even when he was surveying land for a new golf course.

This was no ordinary land in the southwest corner of Utah — a 600-acre field of black lava amid red rock mountains about 30 miles from Zion National Park.

"We were walking the course and he picked up a rock and he handed it to me," said Patrick Manning, the managing partner of Black Desert Resort. "He said, 'Hey, Patrick, what's this?' I said, 'It's a rock.' He said, 'You're correct, this is a rock.'

"But then he puts his arms out and he said, 'This is a desert.' And it became Black Desert at that point."

It was the last championship golf course Weiskopf designed before he died in August 2022 of pancreatic cancer. His partner, Phil Smith, finished the project that has been depicted as a landscape where "Kona (Hawaii) meets Sedona (Arizona)."

The course is part of a $2 billion resort with an enormous convention center, seven restaurants, eventually 800 guest rooms — and now a PGA Tour event.

The Black Desert Championship, which starts Thursday, marks the return of the PGA Tour to Utah for the first time since Tommy Jacobs won the 1963 Utah Open Invitational.

And then some six months later, Black Desert welcomes the LPGA Tour to its stunning vistas. It will be the only course that hosts official tournaments for the PGA Tour and the LPGA Tour in the same season (Tiburon Golf Club in Naples, Florida, hosts the LPGA's season finale and an unofficial mixed team event).

There is a buzz in the Beehive State, and no shortage of activity. Lanto Griffin became a footnote in history on Sunday as the first registered guest at Black Desert Resort — the hotel opening coincides with no small task of staging a PGA Tour tournament.

The course has been open for about 16 months, and Manning said the tee times were fully booked 90 days out.

But the PGA Tour wasn't supposed to show up at Black Desert until next year. The tour as recently as two years ago had nine tournaments in the FedEx Cup Fall portion of the schedule. Two of them, the Houston Open and CJ Cup, found dates in the spring.

The Black Desert Championship was pushed up to 2024, causing construction to go into overdrive. Manning said about 250 rooms will be ready for the PGA Tour, twice that many for the women. Next year the resort should have a water park and boardwalk.

The field features just two of the top 50 in the world ranking — Chris Kirk and Lucas Glover. Tyler Dennis, the chief competitions officer and PGA Tour president, expects that will change over time as players recognize southwest Utah and the amenities as a destination week.

"When you see it on television, I think people are going to be blown away," Dennis said. "When I first saw the golf course, it's not like anything I've ever seen. It's so unique because it's cut out of lava rock. The closest thing I know is Hualalai (near Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii). Over the years, I have a funny feeling it will be a player family favorite."

Dennis can be accused of a slight bias. He grew up in Utah — he helped officiate what is now a Korn Ferry Tour event when he was 16 — and has seen the state's affection for golf, especially their locals or players they still claim.

Mike Weir, coming off his captaincy for the International team at the Presidents Cup, played at BYU and will be in the field. The tournament gave an exemption to Utah native Jay Don Blake, who will be making his 500th start.

Utah also has the longest uninterrupted tournament in golf. The Utah Amateur has been played every year since 1899 — through World War I, World War II and the COVID-19 pandemic.

As for Manning, it's still hard to believe what's taking place this week. He is a managing director for Reef Private Equity, working with real-estate development, and was living in the Florida Keys in 2004 when a friend of a friend mentioned property in Utah.

His only knowledge of Utah had been ski trips to Park City.

"When I stood on the land with my wife, the only word I can use is it felt suffocating, that I felt like I needed to move here and do this," Manning said. "And so that's what we did. We sold everything and moved here and got to work."

Twenty years later, there is Black Desert Resort with its championship course and its spot on the schedule of the PGA Tour and LPGA Tour.

Manning said he turned down a potential title sponsor, wanting this at the start to be about Black Desert, fully confident its going to burst into living color with the contrast of a desert landscape cut through an ancient lava field, the red and pink hues of the cliffs and green (grass) and white (bunker sand) of the course.

The reaction from players arriving on Monday was about what he expected. "The exact phrase every one of them uses is, 'I had no idea,'" he said. "I think word is going to spread quickly."

And he already has plans in the works for the LPGA Tour. Golf Digest said it would include charter flights from Houston (the first major) and free rooms at the resort.

"We're going to do some things that, at least in my opinion, have never been done before," Manning said.

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