New California golf course set for 2028 is an architectural challenge

lA QUINTA, Calif. ― David McLay Kidd has designed and built famous courses on the coastline of Oregon, on an old potato field in St. Andrews in his native Scotland and in locations as diverse as Hawaii and South Africa.

Now Kidd says he’s excited about the chance to build a golf course in the flat, sandy soil of south La Quinta.

“Sandy material to a Scotsman, that’s the elixir of life,” said Kidd, whose design for the Coral Mountain Desert Club should be open by 2028 as the first new course in the desert since 2023 and just the second new course in the desert since 2008. “Every time I have worked in sand, the results have been pretty good. I’m like a stockbroker, I can guarantee the results of the future, but if you look at my track record, it is pretty good every time I am in the sand.”

A private residential and lifestyle community on 400 acres in La Quinta, construction at Coral Mountain Desert Club should begin in July, with the Kidd course being part of the first phase of construction. Graham Culp, a partner in development company Meriweather Companies, expects the golf course and other amenities to open in either late 2027 or early 2028.

This will be the clubhouse of the new Coral Mountain Desert Club, a 400-acre golf course that will include just the second new golf course in the desert in the last 18 years.

“If we can bring that (lifestyle-centered) energy to this community and design the trail system and the clubhouse and the racquet sports, the golf course, where it is still exception golf but it is still not so much golf centric, then I believe we will be successful,” Culp said.

While Kidd brings a world-class resume to the project, including courses like popular Bandon Dunes in Oregon, the Castle Course at St Andrews in Scotland and the recently completed Streamsong Golf Resort in Florida, the chance to do his first course in the golf-rich Coachella Valley has him excited. Part of his excitement is the land in La Quinta, land that may look featureless but has great potential, he said.

“All of it is surrounded by amazing backdrops, Coral Mountain in particular,” Kidd said. “Instead of the backdrops being way back there at the coastal mountain range, you’ve got this Coral Mountain that’s right there. You are literally picking bits of coral out of the rock face that some of tihse holes are going to play up against.”

Kidd, now based in Bend, Ore., promises a different kind of golf courses from a design team he calls golf nerdy, enthusiastic creative guys. The course will be a link-style course that might not fit the widely accepted definition of links.

The new Coral Mountain Desert Club will include a private golf course that developers hope will have a more relaxed atmosphere than tradition desert private clubs, encouraging guests and including variety of activities other than golf.

“Links to me and to most Scotsmen means you are playing the course on the ground. That’s the key element to what Americans, even sophisticated Americans, would consider links golf,” Kidd said. “Bounce and run and chase, do all sort of things after the ball lands, and that’s what I would hope to bring to Coral Mountain. I hope we can build a golf course that allows a golfer to read the ground and then play that shot in order to get the bounce and the roll that they desire.”

Coral Mountain will be the first course bult in the desert since the 2023 opening of exclusive Gil Hanse-designed Ladera Golf Club in Thermal, which itself was the first course in the desert since Eagle Falls at Fantasy Springs Resort in Indio opened in 2008. Course development slowed in the desert in the last 20 years with swings in the economy and demands for housing and a drop in golf participation. But golf has surged since the 2020 Covid pandemic, and that’s not all that has changed in that time, Culp said.

Meriweather acquired the land in 2019 but failed to get approval for a community based around a wave basin. The new project has moved the wave basin to Thermal while looking at a changing market for the La Quinta land.

“You had really a massive resurgence in buying homes and properties in the Coachella Valley (after COVID), so you really cleared out a bunch of the inventory,” Culp said. “We go back to work designing a community centered on the golf course that we felt would perform well in any market condition.”

Culp hopes to stay away from the traditional model of a private golf club, with the Meriweather Companies partners leading a new lifestyle-centered community, a community different than what previous generations have wanted.

“We (the partners) all want to live younger longer. And we want to do so in a casual environment surrounded by likeminded people who are passionate about more than golf,” said the 50-year-old Culp. “We are all passionate about golf, but we are also into surf. We are into padel sports, not just tennis but pickleball and padel (a kind of hybrid between tennis and squash) and we care about recovery and what we eat and we also like to have a ton of fun.”

A rendering of the routing of the 18-hole golf course that will be built by architect David McLay Kidd at Coral Mountain Desert Club in La Quinta.

“Based on what the developers are telling me, (the private club) is not going to be too stuffy,” Kidd said. “They are going to want the members to bring lots of guests and they are not going to get insanely difficult for guests to get out there. Their hope is they build a relaxed club that is more barefoot and long shorts.”

As for the course, Kidd admits designing a course in the Coachella Valley comes with the pitfalls of comparison to other desert courses.

“I feel a sense of pressure knowing that the best, most-creative, most-celebrated architects of my generation have already stepped into the canvas, and here I am doing the same,” Kidd said. “There is a necessity to raise my game into the same high bench mark that has already been set. You can’t mail it in, There is no mailing it in when you are in this location.”

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: David McLay Kidd's Coral Mountain Desert Club an architectural challenge