Mission Hills

Mission Hills opened in 1971 in the Coachella Valley, a desert of hot, dry summers and mild winters below snow-capped mountains. It is best known for golf: its course staged the Dinah Shore, a women’s major for forty years, and its winners’ leap into the lake.

Its tennis complex has 49 courts, with natural grass courts alongside clay and hard. It staged the Davis Cup final of 1978, and it was the first recipient of the USTA’s award for featured facilities.

Grass in this climate is the reverse of the British case. In Britain the rain and cool summers do most of the work; in the desert every blade depends on irrigation, and play is concentrated in the cooler months. Mission Hills shows how far the aspiration to play on grass now reaches, and how much engineering it takes to meet it in places the Victorian game never imagined.