Got it made in Shady Canyon
A free-range Fazio course matches up well with seclusion, roominess and accessibility of Irvine's new community.

It's not easy to find anything that's less than "high end" about Shady Canyon, the Irvine Company's secluded enclave in the San Joaquin Hills of Orange County.

An 11,000-square-foot home sold for $10 million last year, the most ever for an area already noted for pricey digs. Mark McGwire, who hit enough home runs to make him a millionaire retiree at age 38, bought two adjacent lots, in the custom home enclave where individual homesites start at $700,000. Even the community's fitness center would be the pride of many golf courses as their clubhouse, although it is only serving as temporary clubhouse until the main facility-all of 43,000 square feet - opens later this year. Sales, despite trepidation in many areas since last fall's attacks, have actually been brisk, with the fourth phase of custom homesites opening earlier than originally scheduled.

Shady Canyon's golf course is no exception to this heady atmosphere.

Initially, Tom Fazio was given his rein to unfold the course over virgin territory.

It was all part of a plan to offer those who sought seclusion and accessibility all at once. Originally, a general plan allowed for more than 3,300 residential units over 1,000 acres. Now, just 400 luxury homes will be blended into the property. 60,000 square feet of commercial space was also erased from the drawing board. Approximately 14,000 acres of permanently protected open space extends beyond the ridge lines of the property.

So Fazio had 300 acres to work with. It allowed the placement of as many as seven tees on a couple of holes. Rather than "frame" fairways and greens solely with landscaping, he routed the golf course to preserve open space and to take advantage of rock outcroppings, ravines and other natural elements to set up each golf shot.

Even the practice facility was a carefully conceived Fazio creation, complete with yardages to the flagsticks on the range and a competition-ready putting green set within a shady nook.

The result never fails to impress Joe Davis, the soft-spoken president of the Irvine Community Development Company, a subsidiary of the Irvine Company. "Every time you're out here," he said on a recent tour of the course, "It's hard to believe that just over that ridge there are a million people." The fact that superintendent David Major's crew had it looking like a pampered park earlier this winter doesn't do anything to minimize the feel of the course, either.

The longest hole on the course and the number one handicap test appears early, at No. 2. At 595 yards, there's a lake to the right and bunkers to the left off the tee and the green, when you get there, slopes back-to-front. No. 10, 448 yards, provides a look at both Shady Creek (which must be driven off the tee) and East Shady Creek (which, along with a couple of bunkers, guards the green to the left. No. 15 reaches 471 yards from the tips and plays into the prevailing wind, a long fairway bunker awaiting to the left. Part of Shady Canyon's extensive nature preserve is to the left.

- Michael Peck