92
summer
|
fall
Golf
T
here are the five golf courses associated with La Quinta Resort:
the Pete Dye-designed Mountain and Dunes courses, and the
TPC Stadium Course at PGA West, along with the PGA West Jack
Nicklaus and Greg Norman layouts. You can either bring your own golf
clubs (and since you’ve driven here, why wouldn’t you?), or rent a set of
new ones from the well-equipped pro shops at the various courses. If
you book enough ahead of time, you’ll be able to play 18 holes the first
day, 36 the next, and if you are really ambitious, another 36 holes before
heading home, assuming you are only staying for the weekend. Your
call, but if your wife or better half doesn’t play golf, have him or her
drive. You will be tired.
The Seasons
T
he long winter season begins in mid-October and runs through
mid-May; that is when I’d suggest you book your golf-and-spa
weekend, as once summer settles in it can get brutally hot. The resort
is open year-round and room rates are significantly lower in the off-
season, but you should know that in order to comfortably play golf in
the summer, one should tee off at or around 6 am; that way, you’ll be
done by 10:30 or 11 am before the sweltering sun bakes your bananas.
Swimming pools at La Quinta are kept at 85º year-round, which
means having to
cool
the water for most of those five months of
summer, this being the desert and all; as La Quinta marketing director
Thomas Soule says, “Eighty-five sounds hot, but when it’s a hundred-
twenty out, it can feel pretty cool.”
So, let’s concentrate on those seven months during which the weather
is as nearly perfect as a human could ask for. Days in which the highest
temperature is a dry 70º to 90º and nights that feature cool outdoor
evening dining and near-perfect nighttime sleeping weather.
The Hollywood Connection
T
he resort was constructed in 1926 and opened to the public in
January 1927. It began with 20 buildings, all of which are still there.
Right from the start, La Quinta drew upon the Hollywood community.
Near the original main building that continues to serve as its guest
registration lobby, for example, is number 136, the villa in which film
writer-director Frank Capra wrote
It Happened One Night
and five
other scripts, including
Lost Horizon
and
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.
“Being superstitious, [Capra] always came back to the desert to work on
his scripts. He loved it here,” says Tom, adding that, “When he retired,
Capra spent a lot of time at the resort greeting guests as the hotel’s
lobby ambassador.”
Nearby is Greta Garbo’s casita before she moved to a sprawling
villa a couple doors away. “She liked it here so much that she rented a
house,” Tom Soule tells me as we tour the resort in an oversized golf
cart. “It was a little on the outskirts of the property at the time,” he
notes, “but is now in the middle of it all. She called it ‘La Casa.’
“The stars came to Palm Springs to be seen and photographed; they
came to La Quinta to hide away, which is one reason,” Tom laments,
“that we don’t have a lot of photographs from that era.”
WEEKEND GETAWAY
