People who don’t know Reno-Tahoe might say it’s not easy seeing green. Blue? Sure, scads of it. Look up and it’s there in the ever-sunny dome of sky (well over 300 days a year of Ol’ Sol smiles down on this part of the planet), to the jagged horizon at Lake Tahoe (a blue of such otherworldly depth that folks come from across the globe to drink it in), to the tumbling glimmer of the region’s rivers. Earth tones from gold to red? Oh yeah: It’s high desert, after all, with all its chameleon hues morphing from hour to hour. But green? Aside from the pines first populating the Sierra and the myriad deciduous trees of a Reno summer, it’s in short supply.

A view from LakeRidge’s signature hole. photo©LakeRidge Golf Club

Unless you’re a golfer, that is. Drought or wet year, spring or fall, no matter the setting or elevation, this region’s top tracks are whipped into mid-season shape by May and stay that way through October, thanks to the wizard-like superintendents who know how to nurture their stretches of irrigated landscape into the kind of carpeted playgrounds today’s players have come to expect and demand. Taken as a whole, the nearly 40 courses from Minden in the south to Graeagle in the north, Reno-Tahoe rivals any major golf destination in conditioning and variety. Heck, this is a major destination, worthy of every player’s admiration, respect … and wide-eyed delight.

“People expect us to put out the best product in this area–attention to detail down to edging, hand raking, walk-mowing,” says Red Hawk superintendent Ron Gribble, whose crew gets this popular high-end destination’s two courses (the Lakes by Robert Trent Jones Jr. and the private Hale Irwin-designed Hills) into photo-op condition every spring. “There’s a lot of pressure. But the ownership here is committed to maintaining great conditions.” That philosophy is echoed all over the lee side of the Sierra, especially at courses where the greens fees clock in at over $100–which is a bargain compared to, say, Las Vegas. Get a few holes into Red Hawk’s Lakes Course, for instance, and you forget you’re visiting a relatively arid region; not only are the fairways and greens gorgeous, but surrounding wetlands add to the lush vibe.

Head down to another Lakes course–Genoa Lakes, about 15 minutes south of Carson City and 20 minutes from Tahoe’s south shore–and it’s the same kind of amazing, parkland-meets-desert deal, with the Carson River coming into play on several holes and old-growth cottonwoods. And west of Reno near Truckee, Northstar-at-Tahoe’s back nine winds through a broad valley laced with streams, tall grasses and a few pines–a marked departure from the narrow, forested front side. Haven’t had enough pastoral perfection? Hop back in the car, cruise north up Highway 89 to Whitehawk Ranch, where architect Dick Bailey’s first-ever design weaves through high-country meadows dotted with wildflowers, then onto a tree-shadowed ridge and back into the open along chattering streams and rivers. Then stick around to play Graeagle Meadows, the area’s first 18-hole course, which skirts the Feather River–as does Plumas Pines, another mountain classic just minutes to the northwest. Both hug the natural terrain as if they’ve been there for centuries.

Hitting the links at Red Hawk Golf Course. photo©The Resort at Red Hawk

Even when Mother Nature doesn’t provide the raw materials for natural irrigation, today’s turf technology, superintendent know-how and underlying design prowess turn otherwise severe landscapes into carpeted cathedrals. Take, for instance, Reno’s newest course at Somersett, a development in the foothills west of town. It’s private but open to the public and prospective members on certain days of the week. Architects Tom Kite, Roy Bechtol and Randy Russell took a formidable, rocky site and conjured a rousing routing that brings desert, mountain and links elements into play, sometimes on the same hole. “This piece of land was as wrinkled as Willie Nelson’s face,” said Bechtol during the building process. Added PGA Tour legend Kite, “but I think we did a pretty good job of turning it into a course we and members can be proud of.”

Somersett has its share of manmade water features, as do other sagebrush-surrounded oases such as LakeRidge, Wolf Run and ArrowCreek in south Reno, Old Greenwood in Truckee (the area’s second Jack Nicklaus Signature design after Montrêux, home of the PGA Tour’s Reno-Tahoe Open), Dayton Valley Country Club east of Carson City and Sunridge Golf Course at the capital city’s south edge. The latter is a course not soon forgotten or easily negotiated on first play; most of one nine is a laconic trip over relatively flat land, while the other is a stairway-to-heaven-and-back-to-earth ride over tan-tinted hills that tumble to the Carson Valley. It’s one of a series of public courses collectively called the Divine 9, stretching from Dayton to Minden. Play just one and you’ll get the god-given connection–and a new appreciation for the Nevada shade of green.

Up the hill at Lake Tahoe, that shade takes on a darker hue as spring-fed cheatgrass and blooming sage give way to the ridge of coniferous trees that surround the 2,000-foot-deep alpine jewel. And interrupting that green are bright bands of hardy turfgrass winding elegantly through the pines with amoeba-shaped greens either teetering high above the lake’s azure waters (as is the case at Incline’s Championship and Mountain courses on the north shore, both of which have undergone handsome facelifts over the past three years) or nudge right up to the beach itself at Edgewood Tahoe, the south shore must-play (at $200 a pop) that hosts the American Century Celebrity Championship every July and the U.S. Senior Open back in 1985. Wind your way to the west shore and along the way you’ll come across two of the area’s oldest courses–Old Brockway at Kings Beach and the quirky Tahoe City muni, which opened in 1918. Veer north along Highway 89 and turn left at the Olympic lights and you’ll run into one of the toughest and most beautiful resort courses in the entire Sierra canyon: The Resort at Squaw Creek, a tight, environmentally balanced effort that tested Trent Jones Jr.’s design acumen to the limit. Its narrow rivers of green grass, often surrounded by waist-high reeds, is framed by the granite gray of 9,000-foot-high peaks streaked with snow. Time it right and you can ski by morning and tee it up a half hour after your last run.

Finally it’s time to continue the loop back to Reno with one last stop in Truckee and to a most scintillating collection of greens–to the eye and to the putting stroke–Coyote Moon. Speaking of dreams, it’s said that some people’s nocturnal reveries only play out in black and white. Maybe that’s true, but when the sun comes up in Reno-Tahoe and that first tee time is announced, the dreams become a waking riot of real-life color–with an accent on golf-rich green.

Vic Williams is Publishing Partner and Executive Editor of Fairways + Greens, a Reno-based bi-monthly magazine covering golf travel and lifestyle throughout the West.