Is the course open yet.
If you live behind the gates on Big Canyon Drive, you have probably asked that question at least once this month, maybe while driving past the practice range and noticing the tarps still down, or maybe because a neighbor mentioned playing at Pelican Hill again and you wondered why. The honest answer is that it depends on which piece of paper you trust, because Big Canyon Country Club's own renovation has been running on two clocks that never quite agreed with each other, and as of today, both of those clocks say something different about whether the fairways are back.
That gap is worth understanding, because the golf course is not a side amenity in this neighborhood. It is the thing Big Canyon was built around, and its year-plus closure has quietly reshaped how members here have spent their Saturdays since the summer of 2025.
The Closure Nobody Timed the Same Way
The renovation is real, and it is substantial. According to the environmental filing the club submitted to the City of Newport Beach, the golf course closed on August 4, 2025, to begin a full replacement of its irrigation system, correction of drainage problems, and a broader update to the course itself. That same city filing, submitted in April 2025 before work began, projected grading and irrigation installation would be finished by early spring 2026, with the course reopening around August 2026.
Fast forward to a club leadership document circulated in the spring of 2026, and the language shifts. That document, part of a general manager recruiting profile, describes the renovation as being led by golf course architect Andrew Green and states plainly that it began in August 2025 and is expected to be complete in the fall of 2026, not the summer.
Neither source is wrong exactly. One is a city permitting schedule filed before a single fairway was torn up. The other is the club's own internal target set a year into construction, closer to the finish line and presumably better informed by what the crews actually found underground. But the two documents point to different seasons, and since today is September 21, 2026, we are sitting right in the gap between them. The city's estimate has already come and gone. The club's own fall target has not.
What's Actually Changing Under the Turf
This was never a cosmetic refresh. The course opened in 1971, designed by Robert Muir Graves, and according to reporting by the Orange County Business Journal, much of its infrastructure was more than 25 years old heading into this project, with the last major overhaul dating back to 1998. That same 2024 OCBJ reporting, published before construction began, described club documents discussing a plan to spend upward of $30 million on the work, a figure that reflects the scale of what was under consideration rather than a confirmed final cost.
Three things are actually happening on the ground:
- Irrigation, top to bottom. The old system is being fully replaced with what the city filing describes as a more targeted setup designed to reduce overwatering, not to expand water use.
- Drainage correction. Water that moves through the course eventually flows under Jamboree Road, through Big Canyon Nature Park, and into Upper Newport Bay, so fixing minor drainage deficiencies here has a small downstream effect on that path.
- Selective tree removal and replanting. The filing notes the project will remove mostly ornamental, non-native trees, with the club committing to replant a similar number once grading wraps up, so the course won't end up visibly barer once play resumes.
None of this changes the course's footprint. The city categorized the project as a straightforward replacement of existing facilities, not an expansion, which is part of why it moved through review without a lengthier public process.
Where Members Have Actually Been Playing
A golf course closing for a year does not mean golf stops. Reporting from the Orange County Business Journal in mid-2024, while the club was still finalizing its plans, described ongoing conversations with several nearby private clubs, including Pelican Hill, Shady Canyon, and Oak Creek, to give Big Canyon members somewhere to play during construction.
If you have wondered why certain neighbors seem to have quietly shifted their golf routine over the past year without much comment, that reciprocal arrangement is likely the reason. It is also a reminder that a closure like this ripples outward. Big Canyon's calendar typically includes more than 70 member tournaments a year, among them signature events like the Men's, Ladies', and Couples' Balboas and the McFadden Cup. A full golf season spent partly on borrowed courses is not a small adjustment for a club built around that competitive rhythm.
So What Does This Mean for Late September
Here is the practical read. The city's own permitting schedule, filed before anyone had a shovel in the ground, put reopening around August 2026. That month has already passed. The club's more recent internal target, set once the project was well underway, points to fall 2026, which by most calendars runs through late December. We are inside that second window right now, which means the honest answer to "is it open" is that it should be arriving any week, but the two records that exist publicly do not pin down an exact date, and grow-in periods for new turf are notoriously hard to rush regardless of what a spreadsheet says.
If you are a member trying to plan around this, the most reliable move is a direct call to the golf shop rather than leaning on either projected date, since turf establishment can shift by weeks depending on weather and how the greens are taking. If you are a neighbor who does not golf but has grown used to the quiet of a closed course threading through the middle of the neighborhood, expect that quiet to end sometime this fall, along with the cart traffic, tournament weekends, and clubhouse activity that come with a course back in full use.
Life Behind the Gates, Once the Fairways Reopen
Big Canyon was built with the golf course at its center, literally. Homes here back up to fairways, and the course's rhythm, tee times in the morning, tournament weekends in the fall, quiet stretches at midday, shapes a lot of what daily life looks like for people who live along it. A closure this long has been a genuine disruption to that rhythm, not just for the golfers but for anyone whose view or evening walk has included a course sitting fallow for over a year.
When play resumes, whether that lands in the next few weeks or stretches toward the end of the year, it will mark the return of something residents have been without for longer than they probably expected going in. The renovation itself, once finished, should mean a more efficiently irrigated, better-draining course built on infrastructure that had simply aged out. That is a reasonable trade for a year and change of borrowed tee times at Pelican Hill or Shady Canyon.
For anyone with a longer view of this neighborhood, including families who have watched Big Canyon's gates, greenbelts, and clubhouse evolve over the decades, this renovation is one more chapter in how the community maintains the amenity it was designed around. Weir Properties has spent years working alongside families in this pocket of Newport Beach, and we will keep tracking this story as the course nears its actual reopening. If you want a closer look at what makes Big Canyon tick beyond the fairways, our Big Canyon neighborhood guide is a good place to start.