Happy New Year, NLU fam. Thanks for being here to listen to, watch, and read all the #content. Here’s to an even better 2025!
GHIN
I'm kicking it off with a true GHIN tidbit. Here in Las Vegas, we post all year long, so I got a few more rounds before heading back east for New Year’s festivities. I hoped to tie my lowest-ever handicap of 16.7 at least, but I had to settle for 16.8 to end the year. Operation “Get to at least 13 by 2027” continues!
Since moving here in mid-March, I’ve played 22 different Las Vegas area courses. There are about 55 or so within a 20-mile radius of the city center, so I feel like I did a good job getting around to most of the better public courses and a few privates. I visited one other Las Vegas “public” course a few times this year, not to play but to spectate: Shadow Creek.
Shadow Creek is the USA's most expensive “public” access course at $1250 for your tee time. I use public in quotes because it’s only available for MGM Resort guests who are big-spenders/high-rollers. I live about 15 minutes from the course, and while I haven’t been able to play it, I have taken advantage of going to see the LPGA Match Play tournament in the last two years.
The Midnight Troubadour
Tough and timeless, this polo is built for the long ride. Featuring a crisp, non-collapsing collar and a rugged, stretchy fabric, it's the perfect shirt for any cowboy's wardrobe.
The course is totally insane. Tom Fazio took a flat blank slate of desert and moved all kinds of earth to build rolling hills, waterfalls, lakes, and creeks to the tune of $60 million. It weirdly makes perfect sense in Las Vegas, the city with replicas of Paris, New York, and ancient Rome on the strip. Here’s a golf course that looks plucked from a mountainside in the southeast and dropped down in this perfect rectangle in North Las Vegas, across from warehouses!
It’s fun to walk around that course and marvel at the number of trees and plants that had to be planted to make it look like it’s been there forever. So, when The Showdown was announced, I thought it would be fun to walk it again.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from an in-person viewing of one of these made-for-TV golf matches: Who would be there watching? How many people would actually be there? Would it be easy to follow around from hole to hole? What happens when it gets really dark? The practice round day had Scottie getting a bit chippy with Bryson – would there be any fireworks between them during the actual competition?
We arrived just after 2 p.m. for the 3:15 p.m. tee-off. (Important context: I had a clubhouse hospitality pass, so my experience differed slightly from the general public's.) We rode the shuttle to the clubhouse with guys wearing Bryson’s Crushers' skull-and-crossbones logos on their hats. After going through security, we entered the clubhouse to a crowd of people, arms full of Crypto.com Showdown merch. There was catering by the Bellagio in the main room before you exited through a tunnel to an outdoor viewing tent.
Hello, large Brooks, Bryson, Rory, & Scottie
The viewing tent was decked out with large screens, branded Crypto.com The Showdown everything, and a gifting station for the merch everyone had in the clubhouse. In the middle of it all, there was a circular bar. Outside, there was a viewing platform overlooking the 18th green. I joked to my husband, Jon, “Will they even get to this hole at the end?”
We grabbed a drink and headed out.
There is no need to discuss the Xs and Os of the actual competition. Instead, I will share a few observations from our afternoon out there.
- There were way more people out there than I anticipated. Rory, Scottie, Bryson, and Brooks had already moved off the range to the putting green. The ropes around it were mobbed; you couldn’t get down to the first te
Source: https://nolayingup.com/blog/ghin-and-tonic-vol-28-casey
