This is the Vegas that existed before the Strip got tall
Las Vegas Country Club is not a resort course and does not pretend to be. It's a proper old club from the era when the Rat Pack was still working, full of mature pines and tight lines and greens that have been there long enough to have opinions.
You play it with the Stratosphere needle poking over the treeline on one hole and the red slab of the Conrad on another. The city keeps changing shape around it and the golf course just sits there being a golf course.
There is a Cessna in the pond
We came around a corner and there was a small blue and white airplane sitting nose-down in the water hazard, wings out, calm as anything, reflected perfectly in the pond like it had chosen the spot.
We stood there for a while. Nobody around it. No fuss, no tape, no crowd. Just an aircraft, in the water, on a golf course, on a Tuesday in Las Vegas.
Sandy said we should probably play through. We played through. It is still the single strangest thing either of us has seen on a golf course and it is the reason this round has a page.
Good, honest, mature golf with real character and a skyline you cannot get anywhere else. Not a resort, so don't come expecting one — come expecting a club that has been quietly good for sixty years.
And keep your head up on the back nine. You never know what's going to be floating in the pond.