This traditional Scott Miller design traverses with a variety of land features from views of untouched desert and encompassing cacti to small arroyos and washes. One of my favorite features is the 300 feet of vertical elevation change between tee boxes and greens because it plays more mountainous versus links-style—an uncharacteristic find for metro Phoenix golf.
Wildfire Golf Club at the JW Marriott Phoenix Desert Ridge Resort & Spa is a must play if you find yourself in the northeastern Phoenix area. Its central location off the 101 between 56th Street and Tatum Boulevard is prime for people coming into town or locals looking to play an enjoyable round of golf or indulge in a resort stay.
Trilogy Golf Club at Vistancia recently received Golf Digest’s highest ranking for public courses, 5 out of 5 stars. It is the only golf course in Arizona given this recognition and shares the title with only 24 other courses nationwide including Pebble Beach, TPC Sawgrass and Spyglass Hill.
TPC Scottsdale, the home of the Waste Management Phoenix Open, is known as one of the top facilities in the US. The resort offers two championship-style courses—The Stadium Course and the Champions Course—fine dining, tour-quality golf instruction, and other luxury amenities.
The Phoenician Golf Resort has been named “North America’s Leading Golf Resorts” by the World Travel Awards and has also been ranked among the “Top 75 Golf Resorts in America” by Golf Digest. It is one of the 17 Troon Golf managed facilities in the state, which is recognized as one of the world’s leading high-end golf development, marketing, and management corporations.
Two of the Monument’s most notable holes are numbers six and fifteen. The short par-4 number six, also known as Gamble, is a perfect example of how taking a risk can be rewarded. Many long-hitters can reach the green in one, setting up a perfect eagle opportunity. Number fifteen, another short par-4, is a player favorite due to its scenic surroundings. Precise accuracy is a must in order to put the ball far in the fairway or on the narrow green.
The Arizona Golf Association, a non-profit organization, assists in the development and promotion of the game of golf for all who want to play. Founded in 1923, the organization has grown from a small group of golfers who ran the annual Amateur Championship to an association consisting over 400 clubs and 65,000 members.
Papago has numerous false fronts and elevated greens, which also adds difficulty to reaching greens in regulation. Commonly large greens help compensate the difficulty of approach shots, but can also add yet another challenge—long putts. A lot of the greens appear to be flat, but they actually tend to break more than expected (many putts flow toward Downtown Phoenix).
The Phoenix Open holds the best non-major tournament attendance in the world, topping 500,000 people six times in the 77 years of playing. With TPC Scottsdale’s pristine location, just on the outskirts of greater Phoenix, and Arizona’s perfect winter weather, the desert tournament is able to accommodate large, diverse crowds despite Super Bowl Sunday, which always falls on the last day of the tournament.
The Rees Jones design; 828-acre community, is a perfectly executed course nestled in the serene foothills of Peoria, Arizona. The course is known for its elevation changes as it navigates between desert terrain and the Hieroglyphic Mountains.
