The golf course made in fiction!
In May of 2023, I was attending what felt like the 75th technical conference of my career in the wonderful city of Las Vegas.
That’s both a flex… and also a little embarrassing.
Because if you’ve been to Vegas enough times for work conferences, you start realizing something important:
These things are mostly fake work.
You’re pretending to learn.
Pretending to network.
Pretending to care deeply about enterprise software integrations.
But what you’re really doing is sneaking away to the casino lounge for beers, taking “important calls” that are suspiciously close to the sportsbook, or placing a completely irresponsible $24 trifecta box bet on a horse race happening somewhere in Kazakhstan at 1:15 in the afternoon.
That’s the real conference experience.
Now this particular event was being held at the Venetian, which is a level of luxury that Snowman Golfers do not generally experience.
And somehow – for reasons I still don’t understand – I got upgraded.
Not a normal upgrade.
I mean a ridiculous upgrade.
I walk into this room and I swear to God it was bigger than my two-story house.
I’m not exaggerating.
You needed a map to get from the entry door to the windows.
There were couches everywhere. Pillow-top beds. A minibar full of scotches that cost $300 a bottle. Furniture that looked like it had been personally approved by a Roman emperor.
I’m pretty sure the toilet was made of gold.
And it was just me.
One Snowman Golfer rattling around in a room meant for a royal wedding party.
So I wander over to the giant window.
And that’s when I see it.
The Wynn Golf Course.
Now I had never golfed in Las Vegas before, but this thing looked like something that should not exist in nature, let alone the desert.
The fairways were a shade of emerald green that didn’t look real.
Flowers everywhere.
Water features.
Perfect fairway stripes.
It looked less like a golf course and more like C.S. Lewis wrote a golf hole for the Chronicles of Narnia.
And the contrast was ridiculous.
Because beyond the course?
Just desert.
Brown sand.
Dust.
The kind of scenery where John Wayne would ride through on a horse in a 1955 Western. (Go Big Jake.)
But down below my window?
Emerald paradise.
Now the conference lasted five days.
And every single day I would come back to my room (usually after pretending to learn something useful) and walk straight to that window.
And stare.
Not casually.
Lustfully.
This wasn’t “I’d like to play that course someday.”
This was:
The new Callaway driver you drool over every time you walk into the golf shop.
TikTok videos at 2am.
The Corvette you secretly want but haven’t told your wife about yet for the big 5-0.
I was breaking at least two of the Ten Commandments staring at that golf course.
Every.
Single.
Day.
So eventually I find out that as part of the conference, there’s actually an opportunity to play it.
I look it up.
$500.
Now technically that was a “deal” because it was through the conference.
But still.
Five hundred dollars!!!!!!
So I start doing the math in my head.
This is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing, right?
So I decide Thursday afternoon – my last day – that’s when I’m going to do it.
I’m going to book it.
I’m going to walk those perfect fairways.
Smell those desert flowers.
Experience one of the most beautifully green golf courses ever dropped into the middle of a desert.
Thursday afternoon comes.
I open the booking page.
I look at that $500 price again.
Annnnnnnnd…
Instead of golfing the Wynn…
I get in an Uber and go play $10 Pai Gow at Circus Circus.
That’s right.
Circus Circus.
(Is that cotton candy I smell, or Cigars?)
Now if you’ve ever been to Circus Circus, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
The carpet from 1974.
A faint hint of Camel smokes – lingering since 1983.
The Adventuredome roller coaster winding through the tables
(Side note – nothing says class like a casino carny ride.)
But Pai Gow Poker?
Pai Gow is the Snowman Golfer of gambling.
Because you don’t really win.
But you don’t really lose fast either.
You just slowly drift sideways for hours.
You push so many hands that it almost feels like you’re winning.
So I sat there playing $10 Pai Gow.
Had a few drinks. (Maybe lots.)
Enjoyed the ridiculousness of Circus Circus.
Then I wandered back to the Venetian later that night and finished the evening with a couple of reasonably priced Old Fashioneds in the lounge.
Just thinking about that ridiculous emerald golf course sitting in the middle of the desert.
Could I have played it?
Sure.
Did I want to play it?
Ohhhh absolutely.
But I’m a Snowman Golfer.
And sometimes the smartest play…
is knowing when not to spend $500 chasing impossible perfection in Las Vegas.
Because at the end of the day…
Life’s still great with an 8.