The PGA Tour made its first stop in Utah since 1963 over the weekend with the Black Desert Championship. The field lacked most of the tour’s big names but the course itself stepped in as the headliner, with stunning views of the red rocks serving as a magnificent backdrop to the black lava rock lined fairways.
In 2025, the LPGA will bring its tour to the scenic sights of southern Utah. The LPGA announced in May of 2023, about a month before the Tom Weiskopf-design officially opened, that it would stage an event there.
“We are thrilled to welcome Black Desert Resort into the LPGA family as a tournament partner and title sponsor,” Ricki Lasky, LPGA Chief Tour Business and Operations Officer, said at the time.
Neither a tournament name nor a title sponsor has been announced, and the LPGA has yet to officially schedule a date for the tournament but it’s certainly something for fans of the women’s game to look forward to in 2025.
Opened in 2023, Black Desert was the last course designed by Tom Weiskopf before his death caused by pancreatic cancer. Phil Smith, Weiskopf’s partner in golf architecture, finished the job.
The layout has quickly climbed the rankings and is No. 1 in Utah on Golfweek’s Best list of public-access courses, No. 26 among all resort courses in the U.S. and No. 81 among all modern courses in the country.
Black Desert Resort will have a 148-room hotel. A village of condos focused on golfers, another focused on families. A 3,000-foot boardwalk promenade of shops, restaurants and entertainment venues. There will be a PGA Tour event this fall, an LPGA event next year – both of those come on the heels of an Epson Tour event in 2023 in which players were feted with luxuries not normally reserved for that tour.
Golfweek’s Beth Ann Nichols and Jason Lusk contributed to this article.
