When the Wolf Creek Golf Club was featured in EA Sports’ Tiger Woods PGA Tour video game franchise, countless gamers thought it was a fictional fantasy course.
“Tiger Woods PGA Tour gamers have an endless desire for fantasy courses, which is why Wolf Creek was high on our list,” former EA Sports product manager Praveeta Singh said. “The coolest part is that Wolf Creek is a fantasy course that actually exists.”
Golfers from around the world were thrilled to discover that they could play the visually jaw-dropping course a mere 80 miles north of Las Vegas in Mesquite.
The otherworldly layout, which opened in 2000, features extreme elevation changes (up to 11 stories high) and lush emerald green fairways carved into a jagged landscape of red rock canyons and cliffs.
“I’ve always said to people that if you could imagine a golf course in the middle of the Grand Canyon, that would be Wolf Creek Golf Club,” said Cory Clemetson, managing partner and co-owner of Wolf Creek with his brother, Chad Clemetson. “I know people have said it’s like playing on Mars and different comparisons, but I like the Grand Canyon.
“Aesthetically, it’s stunning. It’s like playing 18 signature holes.”
Twenty-six years after it opened and quickly became a bucket-list destination for golf enthusiasts, Wolf Creek unveiled a multimillion-dollar renovation project in early October that dramatically enhanced and modernized its amenities, which now more closely match the world-renowned course.
The three-month project, which was led by Reno-based general contractor BLC Builders and architecture and interior design firm OneStudio D+A, expanded and remodeled the clubhouse, pro shop, Terrace at Wolf Creek restaurant and related amenities.
“What we focus on at Wolf Creek is the ultimate golf experience. With these improvements, the ultimate golf experience just got even better,” Clemetson said. “We just decided that the clubhouse, which is 26 years old, needed to be upgraded. It was just time to modernize it and really have a clubhouse that matches the golf course, where it’s just a stunning clubhouse.
“We’ve expanded our golf shop, we’ve modernized our dining room area and our bar is really first class. We have a wine display now and all sorts of high-end finishes.”
‘Great kept secret’
Mesquite resident Brad Ballif, 70, who plays Wolf Creek two or three times a year and goes to the restaurant once or twice a week, is impressed with the upgrades and expanded space and options.
He is especially enamored with the improved restaurant, which is open to the public daily for breakfast and lunch and serves dinner on Friday and Saturday nights from October through June. So much so that he wants to keep that on the down low.
“The renovations at the restaurant are great. I like the furniture. I like the decor. It looks so much better and it’s so much more open,” he said. “I hate to say it but it’s kind of been our little secret place to go because there’s just not a lot of people that go up there, and I don’t know why, because it’s fabulous.
“The food is awesome, the chef is remarkable and now they’re open Friday and Saturday nights. We like the prices, we like the waitresses.”
Tiger Woods effect
Clemetson, grandson of Primm founder Ernie Primm and president of Primm South Real Estate Co., bought Wolf Creek out of bankruptcy in 2003.
A former basketball player at the University of the Pacific, Clemetson began his career as a sports agent and represented many U.S. men’s national soccer team members, including former star Cobi Jones. He said he positioned Wolf Creek the same way he positioned athletes as an agent.
“We really tried to position the brand in a way that reflected the experience of the course,” he said. “We were doing advertising that was a little more edgier at that time than the standard golf course advertising. That ultimately led to our inclusion in several EA Sports video games and really catapulted us to different heights that hasn’t slowed Wolf Creek down.”
The Tiger Woods video game franchise generated $771 million in sales for EA Sports over its 15-year run that showcased Wolf Creek from 2008 to 2015. The course made its video game debut shortly after Woods won the 2008 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines in dramatic fashion, winning a sudden-death playoff while playing on a broken left leg and torn left ACL.
“Wolf Creek was enormously popular on EA Sports,” Clemetson said. “People would love to play it and then people would want to play it in real life.”
The course also was the site of an Under Armour apparel photo and video shoot in 2015 that featured PGA Tour stars Gary Woodland and Jordan Spieth, who was fresh off major wins at the 2015 Masters and U.S. Open.
“It’s got to be a really, really fun course to play with your buddies,” Spieth said during a behind-the-scenes video of the shoot.
Woodland marveled at the scenic views.
“You can see forever up here,” he said. “Beautiful golf course. Beautiful area.”
‘Focus on the experience’
Clemetson said 98 percent of golfers who play at Wolf Creek annually are from outside of Nevada, the course welcomes golfers from all 50 states each year, and it has hosted players from almost every country on the planet since it opened.
The course, where green fees range from $220 to $420, depending on the day of the week, time and season, has lived up to the hype. It won the inaugural Golf Digest Fan’s Choice Award in 2011 as the favorite course to play by golf fans worldwide who voted in a 64-course, “March Madness”-style bracket. Wolf Creek ranks No. 59 on Golf Digest’s current list of America’s 100 Greatest Public Courses.
Clemetson said the return on investment for the renovation project won’t be measured by pure financial metrics.
“My brother and I, in all of our business ventures, focus on the experience. In our minds, it’s just about providing quality and a great guest experience,” he said. “The key to high-end daily fee courses like Wolf Creek is to get them to come back, because they can go anywhere they want. We want to make it such a great experience that they want to come back.
“If we do that and people are happy, our name will continually be synonymous with a bucket-list course, and that’s pretty good for a small town like Mesquite, to have a bucket-list course that people want to travel into Las Vegas and come out and play us. It’s great for Las Vegas and Southern Nevada to have something like Wolf Creek Golf Club.”
Contact reporter Todd Dewey at