At Rams Hill, the Present Is Bright, but the Future? You’ve Gotta’ Be Kidd-ing

We arrived in Borrego Springs in the dark after a morning of travel and 18 afternoon holes in San Diego, having wound through the mountains with our eyes peeled for jutting rocks and scurrying wildlife. We would discover on our return trek that half those two hours were really quite scenic, had we been able to see it, the roadway twisting through the elevation to unveil the expanses below. The other half, not so much, a skinny strip of pavement flanked by barren nothingness and blotted with dry succulents. And then Rams Hill emerged.

The next morning naturally became something of a reveal, confirmation that those big shapes in the distance had been mountains, the shadows closer by cacti. It did not take long to see why, two decades ago, an ownership group felt it worthwhile to bring a big-name architect to Borrego and spear 18 flagsticks into the desert dirt of this sub-3,000-population town at the mouth of Anza-Borrego State Park, replacing the 27 that stood before.

Or why, after the membership model of that previous group’s vision puttered out, a different bunch swooped in and reinvisioned Rams as the next great bucket-list stop for destination golf, a vision that, to date, has come to life in the form of a major re-turfing and a rounding-the-edges of this great Tom Fazio design. A vision that will further coalesce later this year when excavators start digging on a first set of four new golf-trip-ready cottages. But a vision that won’t fully come to life until the great David McLay Kidd lays hands on the property in the form of its second 18 holes and a short course. DMK, says Rams Hill GM and COO Harry Turner, is under contract to do just that.

“We anticipate that he’s doing office work on it right now,” says Turner. “That’s when we’ll start to look more like the resorts we aspire to be.”

Selling the vision

Here is the thing about the owner of Rams Hill: He’s not a golfer. His interest in Rams, Turner says, came first and foremost from his love for the community of Borrego Springs. He wanted to create jobs and boost the local economy and give Borrego an asset it could be proud of.

In 2017, Turner came aboard, who immediately saw a future where Rams Hill would steer into America’s destination golf craze, adding another great golf course and improving on-site accommodations. “I was pretty convinced that with the caliber of the golf course, we could come up with a plan to make it sustainable and profitable,” he says. Ownership needed a little convincing.

Luckily, Turner had struck up a friendship with David McLay Kidd, the heralded golf course architect who designed Bandon Dunes, Mammoth Dunes, and both Gamble Sands courses (and is working on adding Streamsong to his CV). He asked DMK for a favor—to set up himself, Rams Hill Owner Terry Considine, CEO Shannon Smith, and head golf pro Bob Gelesko for a tour around some of the premier remote golf resorts in existence.

“David did one better,” remembers Turner. “He says, ‘Why don’t you fly and pick me up, and I’ll go with you?’”

The agenda that took shape is hard to fathom. First came Bandon Dunes, the consensus—for all intents and purposes—best golf resort in America. From there, the group traveled to tiny Brewster, Washington, and saw Gamble Sands. Next came the midwest—first Prairie Club in Nebraska, then Sand Valley in Wisconsin and dinner with Mike Keiser Jr., and finally Forest Dunes in central Michigan. Through it all, no golf—just tours and lots of conversation about the art of golf architecture and what it takes to run a successful resort in the middle of nowhere.

“At the end of the trip, the common denominators were clear,” Turner says. “You need more than one bucket-list golf course, you need on-site accommodations, and you need to take care of your travelers so they stay more than a day,” Turner says.

Fazio’s Rams Hill

The first thing you notice about the golf course are the bunkers. With the sod surrounding them sitting dormant in October, they present as a visually striking and even intimidating feature. They’re strategically placed to challenge players off the tee, which means that so many holes at Rams become about assessing risk-reward. Pull driver and you may need to flush it or keep it left or right of the traps, while most holes offer a more conservative—although not always entirely free of risk—way to play.

All that risk and reward comes to a head on the closing stretch. Hole 17 is a bunker-speckeled, driveable par 4 with a wide, fairway bailout space right. And 18 is a monster par 5 up the hill, with water right and a centerline bunker exactly where you’d otherwise prefer to land your second shot. There is a very conservative route that involves two well-struck layups and a short iron, if you have the patience. But we found ourselves goaded into the more aggressive approach, which involved a driver to a landing zone that pinches in, bringing the water into play, and a big ol’ second shot to an elevated green surrounded by bunkers. At golden hour, the scenery was too damn pretty not to try to play hero. Please don’t ask the result.

Of course, once you get it around the green at Rams, things get even more interesting. It’s the slopes on and around the putting surfaces that fire the imagination more than anything out there, leaving you itching for another chance at that approach shot, that chip into the mound, that putt over the ridge. The more we played each hole, the more fun these slopes became. They can work against you, sure—we learned that the hard way. But they can also work for you if you let them, and figuring out where and when to aim away from the hole or take an extra club and land it up the mound was just so much fun.

Bottom line: There’s reason to be excited for the future of Rams. But there’s already plenty of reason to make the trek to play this fantastic Fazio layout—as many times as you can fit it in. As an addition to a Palm Springs or San Diego trip, a night or two in Borrego is a must.

The surrounds

The remote nature of a great golf course seems to be turning from bug to feature. As a species, golf travelers don’t mind earning it—that just becomes part of the story. The more that every day life takes place on screens, the greater the appeal of these truly natural destinations. “I have a home in Las Vegas—Borrego Springs is the antithesis of Las Vegas,” says Turner. “I get about 40 miles out and my blood pressure goes down, my heart rate goes down, my stress level goes down.”

In Borrego, when you turn off the TV, it’s quiet. Kill the lights, it’s dark.

Step onto the patio and look up? More stars than you’ve seen in your entire life.

And if you stay at Rams’ famous House on the Hill, as we did, that patio is worth your time. It overlooks the par-4 15th with the mountains off in the distance, a nice touch that is just one of many the house offers. Some others: two big living areas, a golf simulator, a ping-pong table, and a primary suite with a massive bathroom. All told, there are four rooms containing a total of five queen beds and two twins, and with a sleeper sofa and rollaway in play, the most aggressive cost-savers could pile in as many as 14 people. More conservatively, you’re looking at eight.

Soon—perhaps by fall of 2026, if all goes as planned—you’ll have even more options, as Rams Hill breaks ground on its first four cottages by the end of the year. In addition to giving the resort control over designing these new accommodations from the start—whereas they bought the House on the Hill and rent their other options from local homeowners—management forecasts that they’ll tip the property over into profitability, a very good thing for a place operating without debt.

Of course, for Turner, it all comes back to the golf.

“One thing I’m absolutely positive about: People aren’t going to drive two hours because your cheeseburgers are good,” he says. “There’s only one thing that drives it. Great golf.”

Playability for every handicap

If you’ve had the pleasure of playing a David McLay Kidd golf course, you recognize a couple of things right away. One, you’ll get to dig deep to access your most creative golfing self, time and time again, as you traverse the linksy design concocted by the Scottish-born McLay Kidd. Two, as engaging as the golf is, it doesn’t really endeavor to take you down a peg. That’s not the point. “A lot of designers are trying to protect par,” says Turner. “In a lot of cases, David’s trying to create golf courses that are fun. It’s still challenging for good players, but he likes to see green complexes that collect balls instead of repel them.”

Gamble Sands is the encapsulation of that player-friendly approach, and when Turner got the chance to play it, a couple holes stood out. No. 16 is a long par 3 that might garner a 3-iron or hybrid from a low-handicapper, but something flared out right over a mound can catch a hidden slope and trickle down toward the hole, where your ball’s likely to re-emerge to the hoots and hollers of your playing companions. Then there’s No. 2, a par 4 with a speed slot beyond a centerline bunker that could very well carry your ball all the way to the green. “You’ll hear guys that are 15 handicappers talking about putting for an eagle,” says Turner. “Those are the things that stick with you, that you take back from your trip.”

Who knows what Kidd will cook up in the desert, of course, but Turner’s thoughts may offer a tantalizing preview. “When you’re out there and and you’re giggling with your buddies and you’re having a few beers, you’re giving each other a hard time,” he says, “there’s nothing better than a golf course that doesn’t just hit you right in the nose.”

The future of Rams Hill

The big lingering question to all this is timing, something Turner admits has gotten away from Rams Hill to date. That’s the result of several factors, he says, not the least of which is the challenge of developing in California and Borrego Springs. “We have the right to build the golf course today,” says Turner. “What we’re trying to do is change our specific plan so we can put the golf course where it really should be.” Had management wanted a course that weaves through existing houses, Turner says, they could’ve broken ground years ago. “But again, great golf,” he says. “Not really good golf.”

Until then, there’s more work to be done on the main routing. After a multi-year project to re-turf finished up in 2024—allowing the golf course for the first time to stay open during the summer, and to skip the overseeding that used to close things down for a stretch in October—Rams is making improvements in the margins. This summer, it started the first phase of a three-to-five year process to grow back in the native grasses around the golf course, diverting some of the water savings (as much as 25 percent) from re-turfing to drought-resistant TifTuf Bermuda. For that matter, sustainability is always top of mind at Rams. It recently purchased battery storage and is expanding its solar field so Rams can go completely off the grid by early next year. How cool—how California—is that?

Here was our overarching takeaway from the visit: People aren’t talking about Rams Hill enough. Even at 95th on the composite top 100, it feels a touch underrated. And while that may well change when DMK stamps the property, there’s no reason to delay your travel until then. Any serious SoCal golf trip should tack on a day or two in Borrego Springs to a couple in San Diego or Palm Springs. Just make sure you pencil in another journey for a few years down the winding desert road.