How to Play Shadow Creek: Tee Times, Access and Booking

The short answer

Shadow Creek is not a public course and it is not a private club you can be signed into. It is owned by MGM Resorts International, and the only way to play is to be a registered guest of one of its Las Vegas hotels, among them Bellagio, ARIA, MGM Grand, Mandalay Bay and Park MGM. You book through the hotel golf concierge, a private limousine collects you from the Strip and runs you the twenty minutes north to the gates, and a caddie meets you for what is, by design, a round in near total seclusion. The indicative 2026 green fee for hotel guests is around 1,000 to 1,250 US dollars, with the caddie additional.

Tee times are limited and the experience is deliberately exclusive, so reserve before you travel rather than on arrival, especially around big fight weekends, conventions and the holidays. The table below sets out the access and the costs; the sections beneath explain how to book and what to expect from one of the most theatrical golf courses ever built.

How to book, step by step

Start with the hotel, not the course. Because access runs through MGM Resorts, the first move is to book a stay at one of its Las Vegas properties, then ask the golf concierge to reserve Shadow Creek for your dates. The better your room and your relationship with the property, the easier a prime weekend slot becomes, so it pays to plan the hotel and the round together rather than treating the golf as an afterthought. Reserve well ahead, particularly around championship boxing weekends, the big conventions, New Year and the spring and autumn peaks, when demand for the limited tee sheet is highest.

Confirm what the fee covers and what it does not. The quoted green fee includes the round, a cart and the limousine transfer, but the mandatory caddie is charged on top, and a gratuity for the caddie, typically a few hundred dollars per group, is customary and expected. Bring the dress code and your A game: this is a walk and ride with a forecaddie who knows every contour, and a course that asks for precise iron play rather than brute length. Confirm the current caddie policy and rates with the concierge before you commit.

What to expect on the course

Shadow Creek is theatre. Fazio and Steve Wynn moved millions of cubic yards of earth to wrap a golf course in mature pines, streams and waterfalls in the middle of the desert, and the effect, once you pass through the gates, is of being lifted out of Nevada entirely. You see no houses, no other groups, often no one but your caddie, a seclusion that is the whole point and the reason the round commands its price. The par 72 plays to around 7,560 yards, but the test is position and touch, not power, with water and bold green contours protecting par.

The closing stretch is the showpiece, led by the par 3 seventeenth that plays across water to a green set against a waterfall, a hole built for the cameras and the memory. Play it as the centrepiece of a Las Vegas golf trip and we can pair it with the city's other serious tests, Wynn Golf Club on the Strip itself, Cascata, and the desert layouts at Paiute, around your fight or show weekend. Tell us your hotel and your dates and we will build the week.