Page 38 - Las Vegas Golf & Leisure Magazine Winter 2022

IN THE BIZ

reality, and we knew we had to do something. It was either
going to be weeds or a golf course. It was our choice.”

So Moelis and six others formed a board and started knock-
ing on doors, hoping to raise money. They thought it was
going to be a tough ask simply because they realized the
amount of money needed would be substantial. But, in short
order, they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

“We formed a 501c3 and wound up raising about $2.4 mil-
lion,” Moelis says. “We had a lot of it raised quickly in
January. People just didn’t want to see this go away, and we
all made sure it didn’t.” With the money-raising effort, the BEFORE
AFTER
next step was finding the right partner to help breathe new
life into the golf course.

Enter Elite Golf Management.

Based in Las Vegas, Elite Golf manages 13 golf courses in
five states. This, however, would prove to be their biggest
undertaking and one they are very proud of. “It was pretty
bad,” Derrick Hunter, vice president of operations for Elite
Golf, says of the course conditions when Elite first stepped
on site. “The biggest thing for us was this was going to take
money, labor, and time to make it right. There were hun-
dreds of sprinklers that needed to be replaced. There was
a well that was no longer operable. No well means no water
and no water means no grass. The biggest thing we saw was
there was just no grass.” No grass on a golf course? Doesn’t
sound promising. “It certainly wasn’t pretty,” Hunter says.
“We had to re-sod two greens completely, re-establish a
Bermuda grass base during the summer months, and we
put 60,000 pounds of rye grass on the course in October for
overseeding. It was just literally dirt. We put in 150 sprin-
klers and had to repair some of the irrigation lines as well as
get the well up and running.”

The effort wasn’t lost on the people who put up the money to BEFORE
help bring the course back to life. AFTER

When Elite Golf was brought on board, Hunter wasn’t sure
what type of reception to expect.
“It’s just an unbelievable story,” according to Hunter. “Seven
guys who live in the community said ‘This is our home, we
aren’t going to let it go away.’ Those seven guys rallied the
troops. They knocked on doors and started getting people
interested. When we first met with them on November 1 of
2020, they had 300 people on the driving range listening to
what we had planned. Keith Flatt (Chief Executive Officer

36 LAS VEGAS GOLF & LEISURE WINTER 2022 www.lasvegasgolfandleisure.com