page_title: Desert Inn
section_title: Golf course and country club
hierarchical_section_title: Desert Inn / Architecture and features / Golf course and country club
caption_attribution_description: Photo of Ed Sullivan, Red Skelton and Wilbur Clark playing golf at the Desert Inn, Las Vegas. Clark was the original owner of the hotel; Sullivan and Skelton were both performing at it at the time the photo was taken.
context_page_description: The Desert Inn, also known as the D.I., was a hotel and casino on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada, which operated from April 24, 1950, to August 28, 2000. Designed by architect Hugh Taylor and interior design by Jac Lessman, it was the fifth resort to open on the Strip, the first four being El Rancho Vegas, The New Frontier, the still-operating Flamingo, and the now-defunct El Rancho. It was situated between Desert Inn Road and Sands Avenue.
  The Desert Inn opened with 300 rooms and the Sky Room restaurant, headed by a chef formerly of the Ritz Paris, which once had the highest vantage point on the Las Vegas Strip. The casino, at 2,400 square feet, was one of the largest in Nevada at the time. The nine-story St. Andrews Tower was completed during the first renovation in 1963, and the 14-story Augusta Tower became the Desert Inn's main tower when it was completed in 1978 along with the seven-story Wimbledon Tower. The Palms Tower was completed in 1997 with the second and final renovation. The Desert Inn was the first hotel in Las Vegas to feature a fountain at the entrance.
context_section_description: The 18-hole, par-72 Desert Inn Golf Club opened in 1952. Initially, Dalitz had pushed the idea of opening a golf course next to the hotel with an entrance off the Strip, which would be accessible to other hotels and boost the city's profile as a resort destination. When other hotel owners rejected this idea, Dalitz built the course on the hotel premises. He also opened an outdoor dining area, to accommodate golfers and swimmers who might prefer a more informal atmosphere. The course hosted the PGA Tour Tournament of Champions from 1953 to 1966, attracting professional golfers such as Sam Snead, Arnold Palmer, and Jack Nicklaus. Allard Roen was director of the tournament for many years, and was instrumental in
  breaking down the racial barrier on the Strip. He broke the all-white club convention by permitting Sammy Davis, Jr. to play on the course. From 1958 it hosted
  the Golf Cup Golf Tournament, the largest tournament in the world for amateur golfers.
  According to the Las Vegas Sun, the course "held the distinction of being the only golf course in the United States to have annually hosted three championship tour events – the PGA Tour's Las Vegas Invitational, the Las Vegas Senior Classic and the LPGA Las Vegas International". The Panasonic Las Vegas Invitational, now the Las Vegas Invitational, returned to the Desert Inn in 1983, and became known as the wealthiest PGA event in the world. It has since been won by the likes of Fuzzy Zoeller, Curtis Strange, Greg Norman, and Paul Azinger. The Las Vegas Senior Classic event at the Desert Inn was added to the Senior PGA Tour in 1986, and has since been won by Bruce Crampton (1986), Al Geiberger, who equaled the course record at the time of 62 (1987), Larry Mowry (1988) and Lee Trevino (1992).
  Wilbur Clark was the first to build a home on the golf course in the 1950s. Additional homes were added to the Desert Inn Country Club Estates from the 1960s on. During his ownership of the hotel, Howard Hughes built 100 residential units on the property. After Steve Wynn purchased the resort in 2000 and announced that the real estate was too valuable to leave as a golf course, homeowners were forced to sell their properties to Wynn and his property developer Irwin Molasky. Molasky bought homes closest to the golf course for $2 million each, and homes on the perimeter of the resort for $900,000 to $1.2 million each. The Junior League of Las Vegas convinced Wynn to save one house from demolition and moved it to a lot in downtown Las Vegas to serve as its headquarters. This was the Morelli House, designed by architect Hugh Taylor for Antonio Morelli, a "rare example of modernist architecture in Las Vegas". The house was subsequently listed on the City and State historic registers.
caption: (L. to r.) Ed Sullivan, Red Skelton and Wilbur Clark playing golf at the hotel in June 1959
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