In 1978 Mick Humphreys flew from California to Florida to talk Tom Fazio into leaving home. Fazio rarely took jobs that required more than a prop-jet hop. Humphreys had been playing at Eldorado, looked at the undeveloped cove under Eisenhower Mountain, and, with help from Bob Hope, got the young architect on a plane. The Vintage Club opened in 1980 with the Mountain Course. Within four years the Desert Course, about 500 luxury residences, and a modernist clubhouse were in the ground. The club still describes the mood as easy camaraderie in a resort-style atmosphere. The rest of the valley describes it as one of the addresses you do not wander into without a member.
Golf Digest later called Vintage the last collaboration between George Fazio and his nephew Tom. George promoted the club. Tom sweated the construction, including a then-outrageous budget and a pair of finishing holes with cascading waterfalls. The Mountain Course played as a lush, rolling, links-leaning eighteen. The Desert Course, opened in 1984, brought more water, bunkers, and landscape hazards. In 2014 Tom Fazio returned for an extensive redesign of his original Mountain routing. In 2016 the club renovated its 80,000-square-foot clubhouse to take the lake, mountain, and fairway views more seriously.
The inaugural Vintage Invitational in 1981, which the club calls a precursor to the PGA Senior Tour, drew Arnold Palmer, Don January, Sam Snead, Bobby Locke, and a press corps that treated Indian Wells as if a new kind of private golf had arrived. Today's buyer conversation is less about hosting a public board and more about privacy, service, and whether the Membership Committee says yes.
Residences range from smaller lock-and-leave product to large custom estates along Vintage Drive. The published club narrative leans on discretion, gated entry, and a resort-style member atmosphere beneath the Santa Rosa skyline. Lean on the club's framing of about 500 luxury residences unless a seller's association packet states a different figure for a specific phase. Public floor-plan libraries are not how this inventory is sold. Architecture and lot orientation are the showing.
Buying a home at The Vintage Club is separate from joining the Club. Membership is private, member-owned, and approval-driven. The club does not publish a current public initiation or dues schedule. Treat third-party fee quotes as unverified until Membership confirms them in writing, and build purchase offers with a membership-approval contingency when club access is part of the plan. Beyond golf, Vintage describes tennis, dining with lake and mountain views, speaker forums, wine dinners, jazz concerts, and seasonal Kids Klub programming. High season concentrates the calendar. Many member relationships carry into summer travel. Directories commonly list the club along Vintage Drive, Indian Wells, CA 92210. Compare Vintage to Eldorado on cove geography and invitation culture, and to Toscana on gated Indian Wells living with a much louder club calendar. Norman Williams and Jacqulyn Stanton of The Stanton Williams Group at Compass work with buyers and sellers at The Vintage Club. Reach Norman at 760.464.2190 or Jacqulyn at 760.702.2557.
