Tour Guide 2025: Black Desert Championship
When you’re the new kid on the block, you’ve got to stand out to make a name for yourself.
That’s why when Black Desert Resort opened in May of 2023 in Ivins, Utah, it was immediately off and running to set itself apart amongst high-end golf courses. As a newer entry to the golf and pro tournament scene with a gorgeous backdrop of the red Rocky Mountains, it has garnered plenty of attention for doing things first, or at the very least, doing things differently.
A history of firsts
The Black Desert Championship debuted in October 2024 as part of the PGA Tour’s FedEx Fall series as an effort to bring professional golf back to Utah. It was the first PGA Tour event in the state since 1963.
Superintendent Ken Yates says Black Desert was the first time he’d had to do a full grow-in of a course, and since then, the stunning visuals of the resort are setting it apart from the rest.
“It’s built in a lava field. It’s the only lava field golf course in the continental United States. Of course, the rest of them are in Hawaii,” Yates says. “Tom Weiskopf designed it and Phil Smith was his architect, and unfortunately, Weiskopf passed away at the beginning of this project.”
As the last course Weiskopf worked on, it lives up to his legacy with its unique design. Yates says the course is pretty friendly for golfers (minus the intimidation of the lava fields) with wide fairways, but the layout makes it special.
“They took the overtop picture, and they found natural caverns and cuts in the lava where they made the fairways,” he says. “It looked like the golf course was meant to be here the way that Phil Smith and Tom Weiskopf envisioned it.
“The green grass, the black rock, the red mountains behind us, you get snow on the top … you can see every color.”
Plus, in addition to the PGA Tour event, the course hosted an LPGA tournament from May 1-4, making it one of only two courses to host annual events for both tours.
For tournament preparations, Yates also snagged another industry first with his use of autonomous mowing on his fairways before the inaugural Black Desert Championship. Last year, a fleet of four all-electric FireFly Automatix AMPs (100-inch-wide, five-gang reel mowers) maintained all 60 acres of the course’s fairways, and this year, Yates is using them again for the LPGA and PGA Tour events.
“Those guys are very professional, and their product is awesome,” Yates says. “They’re under fire getting these things ready for a PGA (Tour) tournament, and they wanted to prove they could do it for a PGA (Tour) tournament, and they did. They knocked it out of the park.”
With 19 holes and 7,500 yards of golf course, Yates says the mowers were an integral part of their preparations, and they allowed him to have one less thing to worry about while his crew members could tend to other important jobs.
Setting the standards
For a new course establishing itself in the professional golf scene, tournament preparation happens year-round for Yates.
“My goal here is that the PGA (Tour) could play here tomorrow if they wanted. Our course is ready. But, realistically, with green speeds and things like that (the PGA Tour) asks for — firmness and whatever — there are certain things that you do right before. About three weeks out, that’s when I really start to be aggressive with rolling, and I’ll stop topdressing.”
Yates really starts nailing down the exact specifications required for the tournament a week or two before the Championship. Green speeds, firmness and backing off on watering are all key factors he looks to perfect.
One benefit of being a new course and tournament is the ability to learn as you go, and Yates says there are a few key differences for the Championship in 2025 after the inaugural event.
“We learned some lessons. We built a few more tee boxes,” Yates says. “We’re loosening up some traffic jam areas — some pinch points that we had. We put in a new bunker on No. 1 because it helps protect the lava on a longer shot.”
Plus, Yates says he’s installing more cart paths. Initially, they were only on par 3s and around the greens and tee areas, but now there will be new paths allowing golfers to drive all 18 holes.
“We had to do the first one to see what we needed to touch up on,” he says.
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