The 4,600-sq. ft. facility in Palm Desert, Calif., will include a full-service restaurant, private indoor and outdoor dining areas, a wine room, multiple fire pits, and open spaces for receptions and live entertainment. The project is expected to be complete by mid-November.

The more than 120 golf courses in Southern California’s Coachella Valley have a rare luxury because of a huge underground aquifer that makes water cheap and plentiful, while other properties in the state must deal with a devastating drought. Superintendents still want to develop long-term conservation strategies, but pressure from residents, and in some case legal requirements, are forcing them to keep properties lush.

The city-owned Palm Desert, Calif., property replaced the traditional 4¼-inch cups on one of its golf courses for one weekend in an effort to bring more casual and beginner golfers to the game.

PD Investments bought one of the oldest clubs in Palm Desert, Calif. out of bankruptcy in 2011 and reopened both its 18-hole championship course and 9-hole executive course a year later. But residents are now petitioning to keep the acreage for the 9-hole course, which they say has not been maintained, as open space if it does not remain playable. The new owners say both residential and recreational uses are being considered, but “it won’t be wall-to-wall homes.”

The one-day family golf-themed events will take place at 28 Marriott Golf-managed destinations throughout the world, and teed off domestically at Falcon’s Fire Golf Club in Kissimmee, Fla., on March 15. Families are invited to an afternoon of free golf instruction, clinics, activities, interactive golf games, family golf programs, and chances to win a variety of prizes.

Following up on an agreement made last year, the Palm Desert, Calif., club has begun using recycled water for irrigation, reducing the pumping of groundwater from an aquifer that has been declining. The Berger Foundation loaned the water district more than $2.2 million to complete the pipeline that officials say expedited the project by two or three years.

The new 12-hole golf course in Yucca Valley, Calif., is scheduled to begin construction in November and is expected to take about nine months to complete. Built on the site of a shuttered golf course, the project is proving to be a challenge to contractors who are working with heavily vandalized wells and electrical.

The price for a pound of clean, high-end perennial ryegrass seed has gone from around 80 cents a pound last year to approximately $1.05 to $1.10 a pound this year. Woodhaven CC in Palm Desert, Calif., is scaling back on overseeding to make up for the $20,000 increase in seed costs.