12 DESERT GOLF Going dry When working in desert environments, how do golf course architects create an enjoyable playing experience, while also minimizing water use? Richard Humphreys speaks with ASGCA members to find out. While staying at Palm Springs’ Desert Inn in the early 1920s to recover from a respiratory illness, California oil pioneer Thomas O’Donnell would spend time pitching a golf ball around the property. At that time, no-one had thought to lay out a golf course in the desert. O’Donnell, together with fellow oilman Capt. John Lucey, would go on to formalise nine holes on land alongside the Desert Inn at the base of the San Jacinto Mountains, creating what is widely thought to be the first golf course in a desert environment. That course at O’Donnell Golf Club was routed among existing rows of tamarisk trees, supplemented with drought-tolerant plantings that doubled as shade and windbreaks. Bermuda turf was overseeded with rye or fescue during winter, a maintenance practice still common across the Southwest United States. O’Donnell’s layout set the stage for others to explore the desert as a canvas for golf. From the 1930s through the 1970s, architects such as William P. ‘Billy’ Bell and his son William F. Bell, Lawrence Hughes, Photo: Conrad Dahl Built in 1927, O’Donnell Golf Course in Palm Springs is considered to be America’s first desert golf course
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