Rancho Mirage Country Club (Closed)

Rancho Mirage Country Club occupied a stretch of the Coachella Valley that has long been synonymous with desert golf at its most indulgent. The valley floor here sits below sea level, ringed by the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains, and the combination of reliable sunshine, warm winters, and dramatic mountain backdrops made this corner of Southern California one of the most golf-dense communities in the United States. Rancho Mirage itself became a byword for a certain kind of mid-century California glamour — celebrity neighbors, private enclaves, and manicured landscapes pushing back against the Sonoran Desert.

As a private members' club, it would have served a residential community rather than the tournament circuit or resort visitor trade — the kind of course where the regulars knew every wind shift off the mountains and every subtle break on the greens.

The course is now closed, leaving only its place in the broader story of Coachella Valley golf — a valley that hosts more courses per capita than almost anywhere on earth, and where even the disappeared layouts are part of a remarkably rich local golf culture.