ST GEORGE, UTAH – OCTOBER 22: A general view of the 13th hole prior to the Bank of Utah Championship 2025 at Black Desert Resort on October 22, 2025 in St George, Utah. (Photo by Mike Mulholland/Getty Images)
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Once the Bank of Utah Championship at Black Desert Resort wraps this Sunday, only three more events remain on the PGA Tour Fall Series as bubble players strive to play their way into the top 100 in the FedEx Cup rankings (slimmed down from 125 in prior years) and lock in fully exempt status, while others vie to improve upon their priority standing for next season.
While table stakes are sky high for those near the cutoff, the vibe for fans tuning in during the leaf-changing swing is decidedly more travelogue than meat grinder. This weekend’s event in southwest Utah offers towering vermilion-colored mountains as the backdrop for nearly every hole, with rugged formations of cooled lava rock framing creeping bentgrass fairways and Kentucky bluegrass rough.
The course offers a reminder that a trip to the Greater Zion area’s year-old mega resort is as much about landscape peeping as it is about trying to tame World Golf Hall of Famer Tom Weiskopf’s final design and attempting to post a somewhat respectable score.
Lava Tamer
Matt McCarty, who now has a full year under his belt on the top circuit, shot a respectable 69 Thursday in the opening tourney round. The defending champ, who hails from the neighboring state of Arizona and also serves as an ambassador for the resort is no stranger to desert golf.
But, this one hits different. Returning to his red rock country comfort zone—the scene of his first PGA Tour victory—and coming off a career highlight, a sizzling 60 during Japan’s Baycurrent Classic, McCarty said he “couldn’t be feeling better.”
A golf course never gets a second chance to make a first impression and McCarty certainly remembers his meet-cute with this volcanic rock-strewn stunner last year. He recalls stopping in his tracks mid-practice round, taking an extended me-time moment to drink in his surroundings and absorb the majestic peaks and surreal palette of colors that make you “feel like you’re on a different planet at times.” McCarty, still beguiled by the vistas on a constant loop at a golf course laid out at the nexus point of the Colorado Plateau, Mojave Desert, and Great Basin converge, is not sure he’s played anywhere as visually arresting.
“I played No. 5, which I thought was a very interesting driveable par-4, a great risk-reward hole and then turned around on 6 and you got all the views in the background. I literally turned to my caddie and was like ‘this place is sick!’ I probably said it like 100 times before the tournament started and I’ve been saying it ever since afterwards.”
Since opening ahead of last year’s men’s tour stop (they also host an LPGA event), Black Desert Resort has pivoted from the heavy construction phase, which was very much full tilt during the inaugural edition of the tournament, into a resort that’s starting to feel essentially fully realized — 520 rooms are currently open, with that tally set to reach 850 in 18 months.
“The good news is most of the rooms that we are adding now, like the Cove Collection, around a water park we are building, will have almost zero impact on the rest of the resort, so we’ll be able to open them almost behind the curtain, resort manager Nicholas Gold explains.
The forthcoming park will let golfers see if their swing balance translates to staying upright on a surfboard in a high-performance wave pool, while families can whoosh down drop and raft slides.
Already online is a 15,000-square-foot spa, three signature restaurants, and a full adventure program sending guests on hiking, climbing or ATVing through the surrounding terrain’s . On the golf amenity side, there’s even a “bet-settling” bonus hole.
Gold said the moment guests understand they are somewhere different often comes the morning after an evening arrival: “The best is when they arrive at night and they open their curtains in the morning, that’s when it happens—the Dorothy I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore moment.”
Those seemingly endless panoramas of craggy crimson cliffs juxtaposed against outcroppings of black volcanic rock—signature contrasts of Utah’s red rock country—now frame a development push that could soon extend beyond the resort’s existing 600-acre footprint.
Westward Expansion
Next up for Reef Capital Partners, the Lehi based real estate investment and development firm behind the $2 billion Black Desert project, is embarking on an ambitious joint venture with the Shivwits Band of Paiutes on 1,250 acres of tribal land, a six minute shuttle ride northwest of Black Desert. The plan is to build three more eighteen-hole golf courses—one of which will be private and two of the there will be resort courses.
“We are also intending to build a 24 hole par-3 course that will be really unique in that every fourth hole will come back to the clubhouse so you can jut play four or eight holes or twenty four holes,” Patrick Manning, managing director of Reef Capital Partners, the Lehi, Utah based real estate investment and development firm that owns Black Desert Resort, said. As far as a timeline goes, Manning predicts they will get started on the first one in about a year’s time.
They are in talks with Tiger Woods’ TGR Design on one of the courses and they are intent on that one being one of the two new ones that open to the public. They are also in discussions with King Collins and Coore & Crenshaw on the the other two courses.
Rendering of Black Desert Resort’s pickleball courts set to open in Spring 2026
Black Desert Resort
Meanwhile, on the resort’s existing footprint, construction is already well underway on 21 pickleball courts—including a 1,000-seat championship venue slated to host the 2026 Professional Pickleball Association cup event.
The broad and growing slate of amenities — with a planned boardwalk bringing new restaurants and shopping into the mix — is intentional. It’s part of a strategy to stand apart from other elite golf destinations that can feel one-dimensional and lacking options for families or non-golfing spouses.
They want to put together the puzzle of a destination that can work as a buddy trip but offers what Manning terms ‘guilt-free golf.’
“Here we will have fifteen restaurants, shopping, a water park and a 3,000-seat concert venue. A world class spa is open already. If the whole family comes, you all can scatter and do your own thing, whatever makes you happy. When you come back together for dinner no one has to apologize for anything,” Manning added.
Other Reef property portfolio highlights also include Cornerstone Club, Sweetens Cove and Marcella, a multi-location private club community. They also own Red Rocks Resort across the street from Black Desert.