Resort guests also have access to PGA West, located just five miles away and home to the infamous TPC Stadium course. Whether it, too, is a “player’s course” is debatable, but players certainly had plenty to say when it made its 1987 debut as a Bob Hope Desert Classic venue—“spiteful,” “awful,” “artificial” and “silly” were among the adjectives used by disgruntled tour pros who competed on the demanding target-golf design.

But as Dye argues in his book, Bury Me in a Pot Bunker, he was simply following orders from developers Ernie Vossler and Joe Walser, who wanted “the hardest damn golf course in the world.” Amateur golfers responded in droves, drawn by “the potential to hit that one great shot just like the professionals do.”

PGA West also offers two other 18s: the Jack Nicklaus Tournament course, a kinder, gentler version of the Stadium, with elevated tees and large multi-tiered greens; and the Greg Norman course, a 1999 design.

The resort itself has grown significantly and now sports 800 guest rooms, 41 swimming pools and 23 tennis courts. There’s also a 23,000-square-foot spa, which features more than 40 treatment rooms, a full-service beauty salon and 12 different types of massages. Azur by Le Bernardin is the resort’s finest restaurant, featuring the same French-style cuisine as the famous Le Bernardin in New York City.

Celebrity sightings may be less frequent these days, but La Quinta’s reputation as a “must visit” remains.