Journey at Pechanga is Pavin the Way to Another Native American Success Story

by Vic Williams

Corey Pavin is envious. Not of Paul Azinger, Curtis Strange, Hal Sutton, TomKite or any other Ryder Cup captain — he’ll join their ranks in 2010 — but of a couple of architects named Arthur Hills and Steve Forrest.

And why not? They’ve just scored the golf architecture equivalent of a double-eagle with Journey at Pechanga, easily the best new course to open in the Southland in 2008. They managed to route their newest masterpiece through a parcel of sensitive, historic Native American lands — homeland of the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians — and come away with an experience as fascinating and fulfilling as any in the golf-rich, wine-flavored Temecula–to-Riverside corridor. They’ve turned him on to what’s possible in golf design in his native Southern California.

So, Pavin figured, if he can’t beat them, he’d join them, initially as the public-slash-PGA Tour face for Journey, as well as the entire Pechanga property — as impressive a casino resort as any outside Las Vegas, and rivaling a few on The Strip itself. Then, someday he’ll attempt to take what he’s learned from Hills’ and Forrest’s work, and the work of many other favorite architects, and dive into the design pool himself.

Pavin started talking with the tribe about a year and a half ago. “A friend of mine lives here and knows the tribal leaders really well,” he told Fairways + Greens just before Journey’s grand-opening tee-off in November. “They were looking for a Tour rep out here. My name came up. I said I’m interested, but I’ve got to come out here and look. There was some grass; the course was rough at that time. But I could see that it was something I would do. That was intriguing right away.”

Pavin is a gentle-spirited kind of guy, perhaps reflecting a laid-back SoCal beach-bleached upbringing that led to a standout collegiate run at UCLA alongside Duffy Waldorf, Scott McCarron and others. In his 1990s heyday he won golf tournaments with that same gentleness, goosed by an underlying bulldog ethic. Short hitter, yes. Short on guts, no. That’s why he’s the newest Ryder Cup skipper and the perfect spokesman for a place like Pechanga, which is relatively new to the exploding Indian gaming culture and brand-spanking new to golf. Seemingly everybody loves Corey, and they’ll love a jaunt around Journey, even if they’re getting their brains beat out.

“I can’t really think of a golf course out here that’s like this,” he says. “Usually you have a course that has an arroyo running through it all through a valley, and that’s it. On this course, they’ve used the arroyo and the lower area, then you go up on to the hillside, and there’s some elevation change. It’s a unique course, it really is. It’s a fun course to play, yet if you play from the tips and get some good tee placements, it’s pretty tough. That’s another great feature — you have a lot of tees to play, a lot of choices. There are short par 4s, long par 4s, par 3s of all different lengths, the par 5s have some interesting things to them as well. There are good-sized greens; there are a lot of pins you can tuck, but the undulations aren’t crazy. The wind can blow here in the afternoon sometimes, and that’s another reason to make the greens a little bigger. It’s a really fun golf course to play, but if they want to grow up some rough, it can be tough, I think.”

Pavin spoke of the course, tribe and entire property with quiet authority, a pinch of sunny wonder and a great deal of care. “I’m not sure I’m supposed to talk about the hotel over there,” he said to the crowd of mucky-mucks and media assembled under brilliant, breezeless fall skies as Hills, Forrest and Pechanga’s leaders stood nearby. “But it’s very nice. And I hear they have a casino.” He gave an impish smile and turned his attention back to the green expanse behind him, bordered by the Pechanga River on one side and rocky hills on the other, with a thrill ride of an 18-hole circuit in between. “It’s really a first-class facility. The practice tee is great, good chipping area and putting green. So if I want to come out here and practice, I’ve got a really nice golf course to play and fun place to stay. And I can bring my family here; we’ve got a home not far from here, in Los Angeles. It was a nice fit. Growing up here in Southern California, it’s nice to represent someone here as well.”

Pavin always did his surgical best on the nation’s toughest shrines. His epic 4-wood on the final hole at Shinnecock Hills, which won him the 2005 U.S. Open, still ranks as one of the finest clutch shots in that event’s long history. If he could turn back time, Pavin could have possibly relished the same kind of shot here on Journey, which is as different from Shinnecock in personality as it is similar in sensibility in the fact that Hills and Forrest disturbed the earth beneath its big, deep bunkers and even bigger, fascinatingly frustrating greens as little as possible.

“The course is very natural. I love that,” Pavin says. “It’s one of the most intriguing things about the golf course to me. They just use the land. You go up to the sixth tee and have a beautiful view of the valley. Seventeen is a beautiful hole, I don’t know if it’s the best, but it’s one of the best.”

Oh, there are “signature” candidates preceding that precipice-hugging 3-par, which is sandwiched between one of Journey’s few water holes (No. 16, a relatively flat dogleg-left 4-par), and the final hole, which induces a lump in the throat from any tee but especially the two backmost boxes, from which virtually none of the landing area is visible — all you know is it’s down there somewhere, 150 feet downhill, over a rock outcropping. You can, however, see Hills and Forrest’s Biarritzstyle green beyond. Manage to get there in two (it’s really just a short iron or wedge), and you’ve still got to make sure you’re on the same side as the stick, otherwise there’s a deep and slick valley to negotiate.

No. 6 is something else altogether — a nosebleed of a two-shotter that drops 200 feet from tee to fairway, with buffer bunkers up the left side (which didn’t keep one member of Team FG from yanking it deep into the scrub) and a driving zone that bottlenecks slightly about 75 yards from the green. You can see the entire Temecula Valley from up there, and a good chuck of Journey’s front nine as well.

Twisting up the hill leading from the No. 5 green (that’s another great hole, too, asking for little more than a mid-iron over water from the tee and a wedge to the peninsula green), you start to wonder whether the architects could have possibly found a, well, easier route for No. 6. At that point it’s helpful to remember the historical and archaeological restraints Hills and Forrest dealt with, in essence tiptoeing around ancient structures and such natural features as the Grand Oak, which is anywhere from 850 to 1,000 years old.

“It was a real challenge to build Journey at Pechanga,” Hills says. “Areas we just had to keep intact and remain inviolate ended up resulting in a course with holes that are about as exciting as it gets.”

Pavin tipped his cap to the design team. “It’s a pretty nice piece of land to begin with, but I think Arthur Hills and Steve Forrest have done a nice job with it. I’ve seen people mess up nice pieces of land, but they’ve kept this pristine. I love it.”

Couple Journey’s naturalistic personality with a big maintenance budget and an angular, airy, ultra-modern 62,000-squarefoot clubhouse that could have been designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, and you’ve got an instant SoCal jackpot — which makes perfect sense with another kind of jackpot factory right next door.

Next question: Do Tribal Chairman Mark Macarro and Director of Golf Andrew Miranda have designs on hosting a bigname event, perhaps with some of their spokesman’s best friends?

“I think it could host a Tour event,” Pavin says. “I’m not sure where Pechanga wants to go with that. It could handle any event. The setup is the biggest factor. This course certainly has enough length, plenty of pin placements. There are tricky holes and hard holes. I don’t see any reason why they couldn’t host one.”

For now it’s up to the public, and Pechanga’s guests, to discover why Journey is worth the $200 weekend outlay. Not only is it thrilling in the playing and decided upscale in presentation — it’s an instantly rich part of the Luiseño tribe’s long history, and testament to Hills’ and Forrest’s dedication.

“They say it was 10,000 years in the making,” Pavin told them at the opening ceremony. “But you and Andrew Miranda spent the last five years building this golf course, making sure everything was done properly, and I tell you, you should be happy this day has come.”

No doubt they are. And so are we.

Published in FG Magazine, March 2009