Across the Coachella Valley, the newest course in the La Quinta PGA West complex was designed by Aussie golf great Greg Norman, who severely limited turf and merged native grasses and wildflowers into a dramatic, low desert setting surrounded by a crescent of mountains. Absent are the palm trees and exotic water features typical of Western courses. Indigenous mesquite, paloverde and acacia trees, goldeneye, desert marigold and white brittle brush bloom along the fairways. The site is actually an ancient seabed, forty feet below today's sea level.

Describing his "least disturbance" approach, Norman said, "I believe that making the best use of the existing landscape not only produces an aesthetically pleasing course, but reduces maintenance costs."

Distinguishing the design are one hundred twenty-two "Great White Shark" bunkers filled with brilliant white crushed marble. Replacing traditional grass rough, tan-colored decomposed granite is tough on golf clubs, requiring a deft touch to pluck the ball off the crunchy surface.

Norman's favorite is the 431-yard fifteenth hole, where sixteen bunkers create a double fairway. He said, "It's characteristic of the whole course, a real risk versus reward hole with lots of bunkers and native vegetation. On this course, I go through everything from a two-iron to a driver off the tee, and hit everything from a two-iron to a sand wedge for approach shots."

Of the estimated sixteen thousand golf courses in the United States, most have between 110 and 140 acres of turf grass. The Norman Course has just sixty-two acres of turf between prickly shrubs and native trees in a wilderness of desert. Farther south, in Baja, California, between San José del Cabo and Cabo San Lucas, more than a dozen upscale resorts are strategically located on the curvaceous coastline of the Sea of Cortez. Gray whales are winter visitors every year, swimming south from the icy Bering Sea in Alaska to the warm, protected bays of Baja, arriving in late December, about when "Snow Birds" begin to arrive from chilly climes, golf clubs in hand.

The Jack Nicklaus-designed Palmilla Golf Course lies along the rocky coastline and in the foothills of the Sierra de la Laguna, the mountain barrier looming above the Cape. Nicklaus said, "I let the surroundings shape the holes... to avoid disrupting the natural setting as much as possible".

Respecting the dramatic elevation changes and a distractingly beautiful shoreline, he deftly arranged Palmilla's three nines, placing fairways, greens and tee boxes between mature cacti and oak, pine and pinyon woodlands, with forced carries over deep ravines, and giving nearly every hole a sea view. On the Mountain nine from a slightly elevated tee, the golfer is faced with a steep drop-off to a canyon in front and a sandy arroyo along the right side and fronting the green, which is surrounded by wild desert. On the Ocean nine, the Pacific sparkles cerulean behind a battalion of century-old Cardon cacti and Torote trees, and every putt breaks toward the water. The scorecard reads, "Please be careful of desert vegetation as contact with it could cause injury."

The iguanas and the roadrunners ignore the warning, while golfers dodge cactus spines and consider that the best golf courses look as if they just grew up where they lie.