I was in Las Vegas for a couple days and Badlands Golf Club was one of the courses I played. There are three nines here and I played the Outlaw and Diablo nines from the championship tees, which play 73.0/149/6863. That eye-popping slope is about as high as it gets. Crazy!

Par-4 Golf Management manages Badlands and a couple other Las Vegas courses, including Silverstone – where I played last year. After playing two of their courses, it seems they do a good job with maintenance. Badlands was in great shape. Conditions were firm so the ball rolled out a lot once it landed, sometimes into trouble. The greens were the best part of the maintenance – smooth and fast.

Badlands is a desert-style course that plays through a housing community. The layout is solid as the homes shouldn’t come into play and don’t really take away from the scenery. In fact, the course has many great views of the mountains that surround the Las Vegas Valley.

I started out on the Outlaw nine which is the shortest nine, but what it lacks in yardage it makes up for with undulating greens and hazards. The Diablo nine is much longer. Diablo’s closing holes – the 6th through the 9th – are a good stretch. These holes are in a natural wash as you head back to the clubhouse. Diablo’s 6th was my favorite hole because it requires a downhill tee shot to a fairway surrounded by desert. Then the approach is uphill, again over the desert. Difficult, but it has that cool desert look.

Johnny Miller designed Badlands and normally I’m not a big fan of his designs. Usually, I find them too unforgiving. However, Badlands seemed like a more fun and playable Miller course. The Diablo nine is very tough but there are enough wider fairways here to offset some of that difficultly. Thankfully, a desert rule allows you to drop within two club lengths of the nearest point of grass relief, with a one stroke penalty.

I’d recommend a round at Badlands. The course was in good shape and the value was strong for an out-of-towner. I found a weekend morning tee time for $60, which seemed reasonable for a Las Vegas course close to peak season.

Course Pictures (click any picture to scroll through the gallery):