California valley golf courses undergoing major summer renovations

Summer is nearly in California's Coachella Valley, which includes Palm Springs, and that generally means three things for golfers: more available tee times, less expensive greens fees and some courses closing for renovations. The tee times and the green fees will take care of themselves as the calendar moves deeper into the summer. But the renovations of some desert courses are well underway, with a variety of completion dates.

Summer renovation makes sense for Coachella Valley golf courses because the summer is traditionally the time when courses see the least amount of traffic from players and when golf courses make hardly any money. So why not close the course down and do some capital improvements, either major or minor? Here is a list of some — but certainly not all — of the work being done on desert golf courses this summer: Ironwood Country Club The 36-hole Palm Desert club did some work on four holes of its North Course last summer, and this summer the rest of that course will be renovated.

That will include major renovations on all of the bunkers on the course, with new sand being added and bunkers being redesigned. More: LPGA veteran Lucy Li beats heat to grab spot in U. S.

Women's Open Before work began on the course last summer, designer John Fought, in charge of the project, said the idea was to make the North Course a fun alternative to the longer and tougher south Course. “Around the greens, we are going to get in there and we are going to change the whole bunker style,” Fought said at the time. “We are going to go with a more classic grass-faced bunker style.