Desert duffers: Testing Arizona's public golf courses

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Consider it an earth work — the creative blending of grass, sand and hard desert scrabble until the land becomes art, a velvety green playing field amidst the cacti.

Majestic and inscrutable mountains provide backdrop. Watching a golf ball soar toward that purple majesty is one of the greatest thrills in participant sports.

It could be argued that golf courses in the flat, arid valleys of the Sonoran Desert subvert the natural order. How dare they install grass, palm trees, flowers and scenic water hazards in a setting with plenty of its own kind of charm ?

But here's a counter argument: People migrate to the Arizona desert and accessorize it with mile after mile of aesthetically questionable strip malls and acres of orange-tile rooftops.

For good or ill, Arizona has become a popular comfort zone, an escape from chilly roots and a place to settle down — for the winter or for a lifetime. Bring your own garden gnomes — and your golf clubs!

In the guidebook "Places to Play," compiled by the editors of Golf Digest magazine — a sort of duffer's Zagat Survey — most Arizona courses deemed worth mentioning were developed within the past 45 years or so.

Compare that with classics like Pinehurst in North Carolina (1898), The Broadmoor Golf Club in Colorado (1918) and Pebble Beach in California (1919).

The classic courses of Arizona may be upstarts by comparison, but they offer a fine golfing experience nonetheless.

Arizona golf

Arizona cities cover lots of territory, so it's best to rent a car. Fortunately, most of the streets and highways in and around Phoenix and Tucson have been laid out in a grid pattern.

Getting on the tee

Once you start looking into the possibilities, all sorts of deals and promotions will start popping up on the Web and in various travel publications. The general rule, among locals, is don't pay retail.

Hotels put greens-fee discount coupons in the tourist-brochure racks. Various agencies will arrange relatively inexpensive last-minute tee times to help courses fill empty slots. Some golf courses use EZLinks (www.ezlinks.com), a service that arranges tee times over the Internet but also offers a lot of discount possibilities.

Those who call a course directly probably will be quoted what amounts to a rack rate for prime time (midmorning) on a weekend in high season (usually from around Christmas to late April). And that will cost, generally speaking, $100 and up-up-up. But weekdays, off-season and late afternoons are typically discounted, at least a little.

Golf Digest (www.golfdigest.com) rates what its contributors consider the best daily-fee courses in the country.

Information

The Arizona Office of Tourism is a good place to start planning: 1110 W. Washington St., Suite 155, Phoenix, AZ 85007; 866-275-5816; www.arizonaguide.com.

As winter set in late last year, my son, Gabe, and I played a few of Arizona's top-rated courses — 4 ½-star tracks on Golf Digest's scale of zero to 5. No Arizona courses open to the public rate 5 stars, according to the Golf Digest Web site.

A few exclusive country clubs might be superior to the venues we tried, but let's leave those bastions of privilege to the lobbyists, politicians and expense-account wizards.

At the 4 ½-star courses, whether standing alone or attached to a resort, service and amenities rise to country-club level anyway.

The experience generally goes like this: In front of an impressive clubhouse entrance, employees cheerfully wrestle golf bags from the car trunk and lash them on to an electric cart. Pro-shop clerks and first-tee starters treat golfers like royalty.

The driving range typically features unlimited practice balls, stacked all in a row like so many gleaming white pyramids. An attendant often comes along to scrub soiled clubs.

Although greens fees might range close to $250 and tips are de rigueur, golfers experience a private-club vibe without any long-term obligations.

Easy access

On the day of our arrival, Gabe and I started out by playing The Raven Golf Club at South Mountain. The club has location going for it, because it's just a few minutes from Phoenix's Sky Harbor airport and hard by popular South Mountain Park.

Hundreds of pine trees line the lush fairways, which spread out from an unobtrusive but nicely equipped clubhouse. The 20-year-old course was designed by David Graham and Gary Panks, who carved it out of a former cotton farm shortly before rapidly sprawling Phoenix could swallow it whole.

Pleasant background music from hidden speakers serenades the practice area. We could see residential neighborhoods from a few holes, but usually the undulating terrain and slick greens commanded our full attention.

A man wearing a headset (the better to communicate with a distant starter) cleaned our clubs and introduced our partners — Phil, a local, and Tracy, a Connecticut resident on a business trip. None of us was particularly dapper. Gabe and I had come directly from the airport. Evidently, Tracy had retrieved his wrinkled shorts from the depths of his suitcase.

Still, we all played fairly well and agreed the experience lacked for nothing. The man with the headset met us at the end of our round, cleaned our clubs again, and loaded them into our cars. "How'd it go?" he asked, and he really seemed to care.

Gabe, who had never spent time in Arizona before, said, "This is really cool. It can't get much better than this."

Talking Stick

Our next day at the golf course called Talking Stick seemed to confirm that impression. Gabe thought the Raven had Talking Stick beat in any number of ways, but strong winds and cold temperatures on the day of our round may have colored his opinion.

I considered Talking Stick to be a forthright, straight-ahead layout with wide fairways but a lot of challenging subtleties around the greens. Architects Bill Coore and former Masters champion Ben Crenshaw laid out two courses on land owned by the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, east of Scottsdale.

We played the South Course, and it truly was an example of carpeted Arizona desert, green amidst the familiar background of sage, cacti and gray/brown soil. Players call it target golf.

The facility is managed in a businesslike way by Troon Golf — as are nine other courses around the state — but the decor of the clubhouse couldn't have been less corporate. It had a Southwestern Indian motif — from the straw-flecked adobe walls of the pueblo-style clubhouse to the intricately worked blankets arranged across the pro shop merchandise displays.

Gabe left Talking Stick shaking his head. "I don't see why this course gets such a high rating," he said. I had been to Scotland and he hadn't. There the courses aren't necessarily pretty, but they test even the most skilled players and rank among the best in the world. Wind is considered a vital part of the game. Talking Stick was a little like that.

Troon North

Speaking of Scotland, the next golf complex on our schedule, Troon North, evokes by name alone memories of Royal Troon, the venerable British Open venue near Ayr on Scotland's west coast. Royal Troon was built in 1878, 34 years before Arizona became a state.

Troon North's two Scottsdale courses, Monument and Pinnacle, opened in 1990 and 1996, respectively, and, of course, they're also managed by the Troon Golf organization.

Although the craggy and difficult Pinnacle has its partisans (and 4 ½-star rating), Monument is considered the more classic of the two and a demonstration of just how posh and colorful a desert course can be.

Golfers who go there must be absolutely convinced that they're in for a grand experience. With Saturday-morning greens fees costing $243 per person, you're approaching the price range of the Pebble Beaches, Pinehursts and Broadmoors, those ancient, once-in-a-lifetime classics true aficionados would play at any price.

There's no denying that Troon North looks like a human creation, an aberration in the desert dust, but it's a thing of beauty and a mean opponent.

We-Ko-Pa

One reason for the lack of gated communities at We-Ko-Pa, our next stop, is that the course is part of the rocky, canyon-laced desert reservation of the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation. When the U.S. government turned over the 40 square miles of land to the nation in 1903, officials probably considered the property worthless. But in 2001, the 900-member community — with the help of architect Scott Miller — turned 700 acres of it into an exemplar of Arizona target golf.

A good many courses in the region require precise shot-making onto relatively small, grass landing areas. We-Ko-Pa adds several elements of danger, twisting over or around box canyons, arroyos and stretches of dry wash. Imposing saguaro cactus and other spectacular plantings frame the targets. We-Ko-Pa means "Four Peaks," after the nearby mountains that complete a picturesque Old West setting.

We struggled all day with cleverly hidden hazards, thickets of sage, gaping craters and tiny landing areas. Yet we felt satisfied at the end. We-Ko-Pa successfully incorporated the desert's best features and more than anywhere else we felt as one with nature.

"I think this is the best so far," Gabe said.

That ended our play in the Phoenix/Scottsdale megalopolis, but I did take a look at some of the other famous courses that range across the area.

The Phoenician, another Troon Golf operation, seems to have taken golf-course manicure to new levels, beginning with the immense resort logo outlined in flowers and stones at the entrance off Scottsdale's Camelback Road. The surroundings imply Paradise: palms, gentle hills, ponds, a waterfall and fairways that might have been trimmed with a barber's clippers.

A teeing ground at the Boulders Resort nestles against some of the tallest and bulkiest boulders I have ever seen. They serve as a bulwark against everything else in unripened but clangorous northern Scottsdale. I found serenity there, even though the difficult fairways designed by Jay Morrish are bordered in spots by resort guests' casitas and several private homes.

At the Camelback Golf Club, farther south in Scottsdale, a big mural depicting a wild desert scene faces the clubhouse/restaurant front door, and detailed David McGary bronze sculptures of legendary Indian leaders grace some niches in the foyer.

From the terrace, I could see that Camelback's portion of the desert had been tamed and transformed into a couple of 18-hole golf courses by architects Jack Snyder and Arthur Hills. As at many Arizona tracks, yellow grass rough outlined emerald fairways and some greens, as if the whole property had been carefully removed from a painter's easel.

Final stop

For our last sample, Gabe and I drove the 117 miles to Tucson and played the Canyon Course at the Ventana Canyon Resort.

A lot of the holes were laid out on the floor of Esperro Canyon. Enormous rocks loomed above some fairways, and the 13th hole demanded an accurate tee shot from a dizzying height across an expanse of cactus and brush.

Unlike We-Ko-Pa, the Canyon's Tom Fazio design squeezes players through housing developments, as well as boulder-strewn terrain. We weren't always sure where one hole ended and the next began. At one point, we almost teed off on the 10th tee of the neighboring Mountain course. (An attendant who seemed to be there for that purpose pointed us in the right direction.)

Like astute mice in a complex maze, we finally made it to the end, and our reward was Ventana Canyon's iconic waterfall, draped over an embankment behind the 18th green.

It might as well have been the trademark of Arizona golf. There we were, surrounded by handsomely rugged desert, yet safely on a verdant carpet, our whims indulged, our skills tested, winter temporarily rebuffed. Plus a waterfall! Just to show how improbable Arizona can get.