Big-Name Links The courses of Reno and Sparks have their share of high-dollar designers. By Vic Williams LakeRidge's famous No. 15 green sits on an island. Robert Trent Jones Jr. (below) helped his father design the Reno course. Although it didn't become a full-fledged golf destination until the late 1990s, Reno-Sparks had designs on greatness way back in 1969, when developer Stan Jaksick and his family enlisted Robert Trent Jones to build a course on and below a rocky hillside three miles south of downtown Reno . At the time, Jones was the world's top golf course architect, having vaulted to fame a few years earlier by pulling the spectacular Mauna Kea course out of lava rock on the island of Hawaii. He also had reworked several classic tracks so they could host major championships, earning him the nickname "the Open doctor." Jones was known for extensive bunkering, big, sweeping greens, and making players of every stripe sweat for par. The Jaksicks didn't want a score-killer. They wanted a template for residential-based golf that also would appeal to the vacationing player - something like Jones' previous Northern Nevada creation, the Championship Course at Incline Village . Jones brought his older son, Robert Jr., to the site that would become LakeRidge Golf Course. One can imagine the old man telling his son and protege, "All right, boy, show me what you've got." "That was one of my earliest designs," Jones Jr. said not long ago. "There are a few holes I'd probably do differently now, but it's a good course as it stands, a lot of fun for people to play." LakeRidge is the granddaddy of Reno- Sparks "big-name architect" courses and still has the region's most famous hole. When it was built, No. 15 boasted one of the West's first island greens. At 230 yards from the back tees, with a 140-foot drop to a huge, well-bunkered green, No. 15 offers a 180-degree view of the Truckee Meadows and surrounding hills. The scenic par 3 helped inspire many of the fine holes that, nearly 40 years hence, grace the region - holes with names like Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Hale Irwin, and Tom Kite behind them. "That's a hole I pretty much came up with. Dad and I designed it together," Jones Jr. said. "I'm happy it's stood the test of time." Jones Jr. returned to Reno- Sparks in 1997 to design the Lakes Course at Red Hawk, where he recently chipped in to move three of its holes and redesign another. Then Nicklaus designed Montreux, a private, pine-lined masterpiece that also is owned by Jaksick and hosts the PGA Tour's Reno-Tahoe Open. Arnold Palmer's quirky, scenic, links-on-a-tilt routing at ArrowCreek, The Legend - which resumed high-end public play in 2006 -was followed by The Challenge, a private sister course designed by Fuzzy Zoeller and John Harbottle. As the century turned, Irwin added Red Hawk's private Hills Course, and Kite and his Texas cohorts turned up in the hills west of Reno to lay out the private Somersett. Palmer made his first Northern Nevada splash in 1991 at Dayton Valley, 12 miles east of Carson City, and Nicklaus has since designed another wonderful track at Old Greenwood in Truckee. They're both public, as are the two Genoa Lakes courses, designed by Harbottle and co-authored by Peter Jacobsen and Johnny Miller, 45 miles south of the Biggest Little City. As daily-fee, big-name courses in Reno- Sparks proper go, LakeRidge, Red Hawk, and ArrowCreek are it. That's not such a bad thing, because there are other treasures to be unearthed in the city's golf chest. The rest of the region's accessible tracks were designed by such Northern California-based talents as Brad Benz (Wildcreek, Northgate, and Rosewood Lakes ) and Keith Foster (D'Andrea). The latter hugs the hills of east Sparks , and after five years it remains an interesting track with some of the area's trickiest greens and views that rival LakeRidge's. Foster has since designed some award winning courses on the other side of the Sierra, so he may someday join the state's superstar lineup of architects. As it stands, the Truckee Meadows came out of its recent course-building boom with a stable of architects of which any region would be proud. When the next big flurry of earth-moving activity comes along, who knows - maybe we'll see names like Tom Fazio, Pete Dye, or Ben Crenshaw here. Certainly, there's plenty of vast and interesting desertscape to explore on the outskirts of Reno . Right now you'll need boots to explore it, but down the road you might need spikes. Vic Williams is publisher and executive editor of Reno-based Fairways + Greens magazine, which covers golf travel and lifestyle in the West and beyond.