Fear and Golfing in Las Vegas: The Journey

by Vic Williams and Darin Bunch

We were somewhere around Primm on the edge of the state line when the fever began to take hold. I remember saying something like, “I don’t think I can concentrate on the road anymore, all I can see is the first tee at Bali Hai … maybe you should drive.” And suddenly there was a deep green glow all around us and the air was filled with the specter of bleary-eyed, howling ghosts from Las Vegas’ patent leather past, rolling across the battered desert peaks in their air-conditioned carts, some of them hunched and spewing what could have been blood from their polyester-clad spines, but was, to my mind, probably the liverized remnants of whiskey gone sour and vodka gone the way of a mad Russian escapade beyond the OB signs of good taste. A voice was screaming: “Holy God! What are those frigging’ freak golfers doing out here?”

Then it was quiet again. As I looked down at the speedometer and saw the needle pulsating into triple digits, I took a breath, looked left and spied a jarring expanse of green grass and greener trees and the odd tan, telltale mounds scattered here and there among the strange out-of-place landscape, and I realized we were almost there. I pulled back on the pedal. My buddy had taken his shirt off and was rubbing sunscreen on his chest to facilitate the sunburning process. “What the hell are you yelling about,” he muttered, staring up at the sun with his eyes closed and covered with wraparound Callaway sunglasses. “Never mind,” I said. “It’s your turn to drive.”

It was almost noon, and we had only 35 miles to go. They would be tough miles. Very soon we would both be twisted into bizarre shapes only the most derelict, addicted golfers can manage. But there was no going, and no time to rest. We would ride out this Vegas golf vacation like it was our last. We had four days to do the most delicious damage possible to our bodies and psyches, and the first stop was indeed Bali Hai, at the south end of The Strip, wedged without apology and some would say reason between the ancient thoroughfare to sin and the interstate to God knows where, with a stop in Mormon country to the north. We wouldn’t get nearly that far, however. There was much to do and experience in the Vegas Valley and we had to be up to it, my buddy and I. I was, after all, a professional journalist with a solemn obligation to cover the story for good or ill ...

“When you bring an act into this town, you want to bring it heavy. Don’t waste any time with cheap shucks and misdemeanors. Go straight for the jugular. Get right into felonies.” —Raoul Duke, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”

Leaving Las Vegas? Hardly. We’re just getting started. Unraveling Sin City is a brain-busting game of chance, as shown below, complete with a few of the things we Love and Fear most, plus our Dream 18 holes and an itinerary of how a week should be spent, if money and time were as free as one of those promotional spins of a giant slot machine along the Fremont Street Experience.

DAY 1 We roll into the steamy parking lot at Bali Hai with the Mandalay Resort hanging over us like a golden god. The Pro Shop is a good 50 degrees cooler, and we debate just hanging at Cili restaurant next door and shining on the golf. We don’t, and it’s a good thing. Bali Hai is a lovely island acid trip laced with billboard smiles from Strip stars and finished off with the quadraphonic blasts from airport jets and Peeping Tom helicopters. The palm-lined holes, framed by blinding white sand, come at us in a vicious, luscious velvet green wave, and the water features laugh as we fill them with our dimpled offerings. We’re on our way ...

NIGHT 1 We sit in for Texas Hold ’em and cocktails at Mandalay. Then we stagger down The Strip to MGM, where we feast on Kobe beef at Craftsteak, commandeer a tableful of premium vodka and 12-year-old Glenlivet at Tabu Ultra Lounge until 3 a.m. (we’re twice the age of anyone else there, but charm them with our road-won wit all the same), and crash, blessed and blasted, upstairs in a movie-themed suite ...

DAY 2 We’ve heard about this guy Steve Wynn, how he’s the new Vegas incarnate, how he builds epic slices of golf love like the course behind his new hotel, only to tear them out a few years later, like a Dada painting that erases itself as it’s created. We arrive ahead of the eraser and tee off in an anti-desert dream that causes us concern after our exploits the night before. Are we hallucinating? Is this oasis really here, lush behind the tall bronze arc of the Wynn hotel? It is, and we are, and it’s beyond belief. We pour mighty cocktails at the turn and have one foot in the void by the time we reach the watefall at No. 18. I may never visit Disneyland again. This trip’s much better ...

NIGHT 2 A blazing stroll down The Strip and we’re suddenly standing over a Venetian canal. This calls for a bottle of Italian red and appetizers at Delmonico, a brief argument over the faux fresco on the joint’s grand concourse, and back to the Wynn for the night, most of it spent over several plates of fresh, imported seafood at Bartolotta. The Mediterranean is hundreds of miles away, but we don’t care. This is transcendent cuisine, too good for the likes of me. We toast good fortune and drop nearly a stack of Benjamins in the elegant casino. Somewhere Mr. Wynn sleeps deep ...

DAY 3 Haggard and hungover but strangely unbowed, we attempt the Vegas golf equivalent of a big-time, double-barrel bender: The epic and Oz-like Cascata in the morning — another oh-my-God waterfall, this time through the clubhouse, and the golf course is even closer to God, Moses magnificent and glimmering in ribbons of green and red on some mountainside on the far side of town — and its older, more straitlaced cousin to the West, Rio Secco, in the afternoon. As we make the turn there and catch another glimpse of the skyline that holds more madness in the coming dusk, we suddenly feel fatigued — until a bevy of angels descend upon us in short-shorts and sequined skin-tight tunics. They’re called T-Mates, but we see them as manna from heaven. We’re rejuvenated and finish in a flourish that only scantily-clad young women on the golf course can entice ...

NIGHT 3 Thirty-six epic holes of hacking, drinking and fighting off the urge to hang with the T-Mates ’til Doomsday has us in a hungerous quandary: We want to devour the city’s restaurant output in one blazing, no-prisoners romp. But in the end narrow our onslaught to two Strip stalwarts. At Caesars Palace (which is nothing like the place I remember from 1970, its blue glow long gone in favor of a rampant Roman mega-vibe) we sup on yet more steerflesh at Boa and regret nothing; I suddenly feel a wave of sorrow for my vegetarian friends back home. Then we hold off on dessert until we reach Commander’s Palace across the street at the Aladdin, diving headlong into a bread pudding like no other and sipping Grand Marnier. Somehow we’re still hungry, so we eat again — Turtle Soup, etouffé, all kinds of Cajun wonders. There’s no sense in stopping. We greet the dawn with cognac and cigars on The Strip, gazing at the Bellagio waterfalls from below the Eiffel Tower ...

DAY 4 Somewhere on Shadow Creek stands a bright red phone booth, magically transported from some London streetcorner to a pristine tee box here in faux paradise. It taunts me to phone my editor for an advance — which would only mean several more lost days in Vegas. I resist and leave the phone behind, then fall back under Tom Fazio’s otherworldly spell. We launch several tee shots at the leprechaunish 17th, where a photo-snapping friend, known on the street as Fernando Escovar, once shot bikini-clad babes in all their sun-tanned glory; we search for them to no avail and sigh in yet another waterfall’s spray. Then we slither slowly up the final fairway, taking in the perfectly rendered jungle around us, wishing we could stay here forever, in this oasis born from the minds of Steve Wynn and Tom Fazio. But that’s not part of the deal ...

NIGHT 4 Long since checked out, we load our sticks and bones into the car. The long, hot desert drive home awaits, but we’re already plotting another visit to the far side of sanity, otherwise known as Las Vegas. We fear it no more and loathe it even less. That’s the truth, and we’re sticking to it. FG