Once A Staple of Coachella Valley Play, New Management is Bringing the Course and Community Back to Life

The desert returns every fall, notably around November. You see it all across the Coachella Valley: In bustling stores, on packed tee sheets and for year-round locals in the renewed need to get dinner reservations well in advance.

There is a another return this fall, one long awaited and long overdue. It’s really more a renaissance: Hello, Trilogy Golf Club at La Quinta. Located at the far southern end of the City of La Quinta, past PGA West, which most of us once thought was out there, Trilogy is back.

“We are excited about the course coming back to the level it was during the Skins [Game] period and being able to invite our members here and the public to experience that,” said Mark Reider, president of the board of directors of the Trilogy at La Quinta Maintenance Association.

OK, let’s hit the rewind button for a second. Trilogy opened in the early ’00s, an age-restricted Shea Homes lifestyle development of what is now 1,200-plus residences. For four years, ending in 2006, it hosted the Skins Game, that made-for-TV spectacle that glowed from tubes on Thanksgiving weekend. The series ultimately turned into a cash cow for Fred Couples and in memorable highlights we had Lee Trevino making an ace just up the road on “Alcatraz,” PGA West Stadium Course’s 17th, and Fred Funk donning a dress right here at Trilogy after Annika Sörenstam outdrove him.

The club and community cruised along for another 20-plus years, serving up one of the best courses in the valley supporting a housing development; there is zero-point-zero Condo Alley-effect at Trilogy, with holes turning across all compass points. Then things started to unravel, slowly at first, and by late summer 2022 the water was off, the course was closed and dry, desert nature took over.

“We are positioning the course from a price and an aesthetic perspective to be a great play that people want to come back to again and again.”

Reider addressed the low, lower and lowest of what happened at Trilogy — then long renamed Coral Mountain Golf Club — and in a nutshell surmised, “We had to do something.” The HOA decided to step in and end the outside ownership that had fractured the integrity of the club at the heart of the community. “We needed to establish and then maintain control of our own destiny,” he added. “We’d been through three third-party owners as a community, and they failed.”

A workout strategy was devised whereby the members would take ownership of the club, and a vote of the HOA members — Trilogy has 1,238 residential units, each with one vote — was held last December. “Yes” votes tallied 1,011. As a nod to the community’s belief in the plan, when the restaurant reopens it will be known as Kitchen Ten Eleven. There once was a time when Coachella Valley denizens went to Trilogy just for the restaurant, and that type of buzz is on the get-back-to-that list for management.

As for the course, scores of trees were removed, including a load of intrusive acacias, and even more trimmed back, both to open sightlines and to let grass-supporting air and light in. Bunkers were relined and reconfigured, with new sand, margins reclaimed and toned down. Greens were brought down a few inches — to combat buildup and compaction — and edges pushed out to the original Gary Panks configurations.

Tees used during the Skins Game are planned and, better yet, Trilogy is doing something EVERY course needs to do: the “Trilogy Forward Tees” will measure 4,300 yards, which is wheelhouse yardage for a large percentage of avid slower-swingers. And it is all showing beautifully green again, or, as Reider said, “You drive in now and say, ‘Wow, it’s gorgeous, it looks like a golf course.’”

The course, restaurant and other community amenities are now under the care of BlueStar Resort & Golf, the management company that in the early years ran things at Trilogy. Reopening is expected in late fall and prices are being finalized. Trilogy folks will have membership and discount programs, of course, and visitors and valley residents will be actively courted.

Both Reider and BlueStar said pricing will slot well below some of the other daily-fee rack rates seen in the valley, but above muni rates.

“We are positioning the course from a price and an aesthetic perspective to be a great play that people want to come back to again and again,” Reider concluded. “If you are coming out to La Quinta, coming out to the Coachella Valley, you are going to come here for a great round of golf and a great meal.”

A worthy return, indeed. ▪