Entrada, St. George, UT

Entrada (Entrada at Snow Canyon) is a private Johnny Miller designed golf club in the red rock country of southern Utah. Simply put, it is probably the most difficult course in the area. Many of the tee shots are quite demanding, and given the location wind is often a factor. Contrary to many modern courses, tee shots hit slightly off line will often end up in trouble because many of the roughs slope away from the fairway and towards the trouble. And the most memorable feature of the course, the “lava holes,” leaves no room for error if you are off the fairway. However, the course itself is impeccably conditioned with great greens and the greenest fairways in the southwest.

I refer to the “lava holes” in the above paragraph – let me explain. There is a stretch of land in this area with exposed igneous rocks formed from cooling lava (hopefully) eons ago. This is sharp, black, rugged rocks sometimes piles as high as 10’ – 15’ above the surface of the ground. Let’s put it this way – if your ball goes in there you are NOT playing it again. Only the gifted few with “billy-goat” genes are fortunate enough to recover their lost shots, so missing the fairways is very penal. Certainly these holes are unique and demanding.

Entrada is a members-only club, which is good because unlike the others in the area it is necessary to play the course a few times in order to know where to play on several holes. There are a lot of instances where a player needs to cut the corner (#2, #9, #13) or where the preferred landing areas are not easy to assess from the tee shot (#11 & #16). I have now played the course twice and certainly felt better about where to play the second time around.