Bear's Best Las Vegas: What We Know About the Reopening

Bear's Best Las Vegas was one of the more unusual concepts in the valley: a Jack Nicklaus design that assembled 18 replica holes drawn from his signature courses around the world — a "greatest hits" tour you could play in a single afternoon in Summerlin. It's now closed, and being rebuilt into something different. Because there's a lot of speculation floating around, here's only what we can actually verify.

What's confirmed

The course is closed to public play. Bear's Best ceased operations in 2025. Its run as a daily-fee Nicklaus replica course is over.

It was sold and is being redeveloped. The property changed hands and is undergoing a major redevelopment reported in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The plan is not a simple refresh of the existing course — it's a full transformation of the site, including new luxury residential development alongside the golf.

It's becoming a private club. This is the most important point for visitors to understand: the reporting indicates the site is being reimagined as a private, members-only club under a new name and identity — not a reopening of the public Bear's Best that golf travelers could book on a whim. The boutique-clubhouse, members-club direction is a deliberate shift away from public-access golf.

A target reopening has been floated for late 2026. Public reporting has pointed to an autumn 2026 timeframe for the reimagined club, with associated residential phases extending beyond that.

What made the original worth remembering

The Bear's Best concept was genuinely novel. Rather than design an original 18, the project recreated 18 of Jack Nicklaus's favorite holes from his designs around the world — a single round that walked you through Nicklaus's greatest hits, holes pulled from courses scattered across continents and reassembled in the Summerlin desert. It was a curiosity and a conversation piece as much as a championship test, and for golf travelers it offered something no other Vegas course did. That specific experience is what's now ending; whatever opens on the site will be a different proposition entirely.

Part of a bigger trend

Bear's Best isn't an isolated case. The valley has seen public-access courses move upmarket or private as Las Vegas land values climb and developers chase luxury residential — the same forces that turned the former Rio Secco into the rebranded, premium Serket. For visitors, the practical lesson is that the public-access map changes, and it's worth confirming a course's current status before building a trip around it.

What we're not going to claim

Redevelopment timelines move, and a stated target is not a confirmed opening date. We're not going to print a hard reopening day, a membership price, or a final routing as fact until those are officially confirmed. Where you see specific figures elsewhere, treat them as projections rather than guarantees. We'll update this page as verified details land.

What it means for visitors

If you came to Vegas hoping to play the old Bear's Best, that option is gone, and the course that replaces it appears headed for private membership rather than public tee sheets. The practical move is to redirect to the valley's deep bench of accessible Nicklaus and championship golf. Reflection Bay on Lake Las Vegas is a public-access Nicklaus design, Coyote Springs is a Nicklaus Signature layout north of town, and TPC Summerlin and Serket give you tour-quality public golf nearby.

The valley loses one distinctive course but keeps dozens of excellent, bookable ones — and the best way to plan around a closure like this is to stay current on what's actually open. For the bigger picture on access in the valley, read our guide on public versus private Las Vegas golf, or browse all 53 courses.