"We are truly honored to receive this recognition from Golf Inc. Magazine," said General Manager Desi Speh when the club's golf course took first place in the private category of Golf Inc. Magazine's 2026 Best Renovation of the Year awards. It is a well-earned line, and most residents already know some version of the story: the course closed, the course reopened, the course won.
What the press release does not lead with is this. The putting course, the one piece of Desert Highlands history that predates almost everything else on the property, still has no opening date. If you have been wondering why the smaller project is outlasting the massive one, the answer says more about how this club actually operates than the award does.
What the award covers, and what it doesn't
Golf Inc.'s judging window ran from October 1, 2024 to October 1, 2025, which means the recognition is specifically for the championship course restoration, a project Nicklaus Design's own recap breaks into six components: hole design enhancements, greens reconstruction, tee reconstruction, bunker reconstruction, desert de- and re-vegetation, and turf restoration across tees, fairways and rough. The course closed in late April 2025 and reopened in November, roughly seven months of no play on a track that had hosted the first two televised Skins Games in 1983 and 1984, with Nicklaus, Palmer, Player and Watson on the tee sheet, according to Golf Digest's course history.
The specific fixes tell you this was a working document, not a cosmetic refresh. The eighth green was re-oriented to sit more perpendicular to the fairway line, correcting a sight-line problem players had been navigating around for years. The ridge that used to hide the alternate fairway on the short par-4 13th is gone, which turns that hole into a genuinely riskier drivable par-4 rather than a blind guess. New tee boxes on 10 push golfers back from the range, and a third tee box went in on 18, with a couple of saguaros moved to make room. None of that is marketing language. It is the kind of detail you only get from someone who actually walked the new routing, in this case Nicklaus Design senior designer Chad Goetz and the club's Director of Agronomy, Cody Horstman.
The scoreboard right now
Here is where things stand as of the award announcement in late May 2026, based on the club's own reporting:
| Project | Status |
|---|---|
| Championship golf course | Reopened November 2025 after a $9.8 to $10 million restoration |
| Golf shop | Reopened with a redesigned layout and relocated retail counter, part of a $2.5 million package |
| Women's locker room | Reopened with new finishes, a refreshed card lounge, and a self-serve station with wine on tap |
| Fitness center | Recently updated with MATRIX equipment across its 7,700 square feet |
| Ventana Dining Room | Recently enhanced with larger windows and a more open floor plan |
| Putting course | Sodded with TifEagle Bermuda in early October 2025, no opening date announced |
That last line is the one worth sitting with. The Golf Inc. announcement itself still describes the putting course as "under construction," using nearly the same language the club used back in November when the championship course reopened. Half a year has passed between those two updates and the status has not moved.
Why the small course is taking longer than the big one
This is not neglect. It is agronomy. A championship fairway needs to survive a mower at three-quarters of an inch and a golf shoe cutting through it on a downswing. A putting surface, especially one built to the standard of the original 1980s design, gets mowed at a fraction of that height and gets read up close by players who will notice every bump. TifEagle Bermuda, the strain the club chose, needs a longer runway to knit a dense enough root system before it can handle that kind of scrutiny. The construction crew that rebuilt the greens on the main course, working with builder Heritage Links, had a tight but manageable window. The putting course, by design, does not get to skip steps just because it is smaller.
The other piece of context: this putting course is not a generic practice green. It is a par-41 layout designed by Gary Panks, and the club describes it as the first putting course built in the United States and the second in the world. If you are a member who has played it before the closure, you already know it plays more like a scaled-down golf course than a warm-up green, which is exactly why the club is not rushing the grow-in.
Reading the longer arc
Zoom out and the timing makes more sense. This club has been reinvesting on a rolling basis for half a decade, not doing one renovation and calling it finished.
- 2020: Jack's gastropub opens inside the clubhouse, the centerpiece of a $2 million project that also reworked the kitchen, according to Club + Resort Business.
- 2021: Jack's Backyard, an outdoor pavilion with fire pits and two bocce courts designed by Wendall Pickett of Greey Pickett, opens December 1. The Ventana Dining Room gets a full renovation with a chef action station. The fitness center gets its first round of MATRIX equipment.
- 2025: The championship course closes for its most extensive restoration in years, alongside the golf shop and women's locker room.
- 2026: The course restoration wins a national award. Ventana gets a second pass, larger windows this time. The putting course remains the one open item on the list.
Seen this way, the putting course delay is not a stalled project. It is the last domino in a sequence the club has been working through since 2020, and it happens to be the one with the strictest turf requirements.
What that means for you this month
For residents deciding where to spend an evening or squeeze in a workout, the practical picture is straightforward. Jack's is open for its usual gastropub run, and in past summers the kitchen has used the season to test lighter dishes on the specials board, things like a compressed watermelon and smoked grape salad or griddled fish tacos, so it is worth asking what is rotating through right now. Ventana is open and worth booking if you want the newly widened sightlines over the valley at sunset. The Rocks is still your on-course option for something quick between the front and back nine.
The Racquet Club has not been part of this renovation cycle at all, and it remains one of the more talked-about corners of the club. Its 13 courts cover all three Grand Slam surfaces, grass, clay and hard, plus two regulation pickleball courts, and it earned an unusual compliment a few years back when ATP player Nick Kyrgios reportedly called the grass courts better than Wimbledon's, a claim Club + Resort Business reported at the time.
If you are looking for something outside the gates, the community's own walking network runs about five miles through the property, and the dog park remains one of the more reliable places to run into neighbors on a weekday morning. None of it requires a tee time or a dinner reservation.
The putting course is the one item on this list without a date attached. When it reopens, it will not be because of a press release. It will be because the turf finally passed the same test every other surface on this property has already had to pass.
If you're curious what any of this means for property values or timing inside Desert Highlands, or you'd simply like a second set of eyes on the market from a team that watches this community closely, Fine Homes Group is happy to talk it through. Request your complimentary consultation whenever it's useful.
