Scottsdale, Arizona, has always been a popular golf vacation destination. No major U.S. city rivals this thriving hot spot — and by extension neighboring Phoenix — when it comes to accessible, high-quality public golf courses with abundant sunshine that allows for year-round play.
Sure enough, summers in Arizona are extremely hot, but prices adjust accordingly, often dropping by 75% or more and creating a rare “if you can take the heat” bargain for top-quality venues.
Whether it’s for a business trip or a non-golf family vacation, Scottsdale has many positive attributes for those with the time and inclination to squeeze in a round or two.
What makes Scottsdale special?
Unique desert architecture
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Perhaps Scottsdale’s greatest appeal is its Sonoran Desert ecosystem. There are lots of different deserts, from the dark red sands of the Australian Outback to the towering dunes of Namibia, but the Sonoran is the stuff “Road Runner” cartoons are made of, with the distinctive “don’t shoot, my hands are up” saguaro cactus and an endless variety of smaller cacti and vegetation.
It recalls the diverse, fantastical beauty of the ocean floor with its reef-like rock formations. A type of cactus or bush will mirror just about every sponge and coral you’d see diving.
The word desert evokes starkness, but this is nature at its most beautiful, and there are only a handful of places, and no other major cities, where you can play great golf in the Sonoran Desert, which extends from the Southwest down Mexico’s Baja peninsula. For this reason, the entire architectural style known as desert golf was invented and has flourished right here.
“If you haven’t played in the Arizona desert before, it’s a mind-blowing experience. You just don’t get that scenery anyplace else, and it’s definitely the best setting for desert golf,” said Robert Pedrero, founder and former publisher of The Golf Insider travel newsletter.
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Sustainable approaches
Water was always scarce, so long before recent droughts and sustainability concerns, desert golf focused on a “limited turf” approach and minimized the footprint of water-intensive grass by planting only where it was needed for tees, greens and fairway landing areas.
Exposed desert waste areas not only increase functionality but also showcase the region’s beauty. Instead of tee-to-green and tree-line-to-tree-line plush grass carpet found elsewhere, you have islands of grass set in the desert — where you play from one to the next — with lots of sandy, rocky, cacti-strewn cross hazards.
The result is often called “target golf,” but it’s less challenging than it sounds. Few water hazards, no forest to lose your balls in, and waste areas often allow you to find your ball and recover back into play. You enjoy eye-opening landscapes everywhere you look, as courses often sit in valleys between boulder-strewn hillsides.
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Access and availability
Golf courses in Scottsdale are also conveniently located and relatively easy to get to, unlike in many cities where they lay in the suburbs — in the case of New York, one, two or even three hours from the metro area.
Even without advance planning, you are likely to be able to spontaneously tee off on a standout course here, and in urban areas, that is rarely the case.
It feels like a private club, but it’s open to all
New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Los Angeles are flush with highly rated and historic golf courses, but they are almost entirely highly exclusive private clubs which are virtually impossible to play without knowing a member.
Troon North was one of the nation’s first “high-end daily fee” or “member for a day” courses, the golf industry’s idea to replicate the service and facilities of a private club for the general public. Troon became a global golf management powerhouse, and as a result, the service levels, course conditions, clubhouses, food, club rentals, practice ranges and all golf-related amenities have remained at a very high-quality level in the region.
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It’s normal to show up and be handed a little gift bag and complimentary yardage book, which you would be charged $20 extra for at Pebble Beach.
Finally, almost all of the better golf courses in Scottsdale are at 36-hole facilities, so you always have a choice of two courses under one roof, and wherever you stay you are likely to be close to one of these.
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Bargains abound
One other thing many travelers don’t realize is how amazing the summer deals are. Play courses like the Boulders in peak season and it’s close to $300 a round. Almost all the top layouts are in the $250-plus range, but in summertime you can play them for $55-$60. We’re talking discounts over 75%, and it’s the same for rooms, even at luxury hotels.
The Fairmont Scottsdale Princess usually has summer stay-and-play packages that include a hotel room, lunch and golf for two for just over three hundred bucks total, and that’s what it charges in winter just for one person to play golf, with no accommodations or extras. There are almost no other options for playing top courses in this country for under $70.
Fortunately, the peak winter season is short here, from January to mid-April, and even spring and fall see significant (roughly 35%) price reductions with excellent weather and values in late April, May and October to December.
The best public golf courses in Scottsdale
Fairmont Scottsdale Princess — TPC Scottsdale
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This luxury full-service resort is probably the one business travelers are most likely to find themselves at for a convention or such. Its golf club is also fairly centrally located for those staying in downtown Scottsdale.
The big deal at the Fairmont, though, is that the TPC Stadium Course is home to the single most attended golf tournament in the world, the WM Phoenix Open, aka “The Greatest Show on Grass.” With concerts, late-night party tents and well over 600,000 annual live spectators, it is to professional golf what Mardi Gras is to urban festivals: the biggest and loudest of them all.
As a result, virtually all golf fans have seen it on television — and golf fans love playing courses they have seen on television. It’s this familiarity and long-running tournament history that makes it desirable, more than the quality of the course itself.
Because it is a Tournament Players Club, or TPC, course, it was built specifically to host tournaments and accommodate countless spectators, and the result is a bit flat and boring. But it has its highlights, and the biggest of these is undoubtedly the par-3 16th, the only hole on the PGA Tour played in its own stadium, an enclosed amphitheater with stands the size of a Major League Baseball field. It is one of the most iconic golf holes on the planet, and where Tiger Woods once famously wowed the crowd with a hole-in-one.
The second 18 at TPC Scottsdale is the Championship Course, even less interesting, and its main appeal is as a summer add-on when rates drop and bargain-priced “replay” rounds are available for those wanting to tackle 36 in one day.
The Phoenician
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The next most likely place business travelers might find themselves, this luxury resort is the closet to pedestrian-friendly Old Town Scottsdale. It’s also the most convenient for golfers staying in Phoenix, as it sits close to the border between the two cities.
For years The Phoenician had three nines, but it has permanently shifted from 27 to 18 holes. The golf course is a hybrid design, a desert setting that plays more like a parkland course, with no blind shots, hidden hazards or scary surprises.
It is beautifully maintained, and while it lacks the epic Sonoran drama many come for, it’s a fun and high-quality golf experience, welcoming and the least challenging or intimidating of all these courses. If you are staying here or nearby it’s an easy choice.
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We-Ko-Pa Golf Club
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Scottsdale’s 36-hole temples to desert golf are where the real action lies, and this is the best of the best. With a slightly farther-flung suburban location, it’s the most easterly of the top facilities.
We-Ko-Pa is owned by the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation and it also has an on-site casino resort, of the humbler variety, and is a bit isolated. It is the highest-ranked Scottsdale duo by Golf Magazine, and both designs — named for cactus varieties — have landed in the nation’s top 50 public courses.
If you can only play one, the slight edge goes to Cholla, which may come as a surprise to visiting golfers because it is the work of little-known architect Scott Miller; the Saguaro course was the work of acclaimed duo Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, who consistently ranked among the world’s best and most famous designers. Both courses focus on strategic value and combine the best of the local desert beauty landscape with numerous risk-reward decisions.
These are courses for the thinking golfer and on almost every par 4 or par 5 you can choose from multiple clubs, teeing off with everything from low iron to fairway wood — they are definitely not “just grab the driver again” courses. They are also the most walkable in a region where carts are prevalent, so if you like to walk the course, it’s another reason to choose We-Ko-Pa.
Both courses are exceptional, and all year round We-Ko-Pa offers a 36-hole package to play both in one day, which ranges from $600 in the peak season down to $165 in the summer.
Talking Stick Golf Club
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Talking Stick is another very high-quality 36-hole and casino resort combo, but this one is much more focused on lodging and amenities, and the hotel is first class all the way, with great restaurants and entertainment.
Between the lodging and courses, it’s arguably the nation’s best casino golf resort outside Las Vegas. It’s also the most centrally located of all the quality options — right in the middle of Scottsdale, just off the highway — and easier to get to from most lodging.
Both courses at Talking Stick Golf Club were designed by Coore and Crenshaw (and they are managed by Troon Golf) and the result is an extremely pleasant and consistent experience.
Because it is closer to downtown Scottsdale than the quality desert courses farther north (Grayhawk, Boulders, Troon North), the terrain is different. Instead of desert target-style golf, these flatter courses both feature wall-to-wall turf with almost no trees.
Unlike the blind shots over rocky ridges, here what you see is what you get and, in true Coore-Crenshaw style, there are a lot of risk-reward choices, but they are more subtle than at We-Ko-Pa and you don’t have to be a student of the game to love a round here.
Almost every hole offers a tighter driving line that pays off with a much easier approach shot. The idea is that you can make easy bogies by playing it safe off the tee and seize birdies by taking risks. Many holes on both courses feature one large and prominent bunker in the fairway that you have to decide whether to play short of, over or around.
The O’odham Course is considered the marquee layout, but the quality difference is slight. However, it is noticeably tougher, with heavily bunkered greens and thicker brush surrounding the fairways. The Piipaash Course is more scenic, varied and fun, with a couple of water hazards (unusual in the area). The O’odham is completely dry.
Lower handicappers should lean toward O’odham, higher handicappers Piipaash, but it’s better if you can play both as they really complement each other.
Grayhawk Golf Club
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Another famous Scottsdale 36-hole facility, Grayhawk is conveniently located for many visitors, just north of the Fairmont and its TPC Courses, and unusual in that it has no associated lodging.
Both its courses, Talon and Raptor, have hosted high-profile events, including the Fry’s Electronics Open, won by Masters champion Mike Weir, and the Williams World Challenge, won by local legend Tom Lehman. On three occasions, it’s also played host to the Andersen Consulting World Championship of Golf, won by Barry Lane, Greg Norman and Colin Montgomerie.
Raptor was designed by superstar architect Tom Fazio and stretches just over 7,000 yards, with generous fairways and large greens protected by deep greenside bunkers and water. Talon was designed by US Open and PGA Championship winner David Graham and golf architect Gary Panks, a Southwestern desert specialist. It is known for its large multitiered greens, which give room for error but place a big premium on accuracy in order to score well.
Grayhawk is among the area’s most popular daily-fee facilities. These big, in-your-face courses are intended to display desert shock and awe, with creeks, ravines, elevation changes, mountain vistas, deep pot bunkers and do-or-die heroics. There’s even an island green on Talon. In terms of strategy and architectural design, Grayhawk sits below stars We-Ko-Pa and Talking Stick, but they are hard courses in a memorable and dramatic way, and pretty much everyone has a lot of fun and loves the challenge of playing them.
Four Seasons Scottsdale, Troon North
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The courses at the Four Seasons predate the hotel, and you do not have to be a guest at this luxury property to play here.
Troon North was the original high-end public course that put management company Troon Golf on the map. Both courses offer frequent views of local landmark Pinnacle Peak and are visually stunning, known for showcasing giant granite boulders and eerie rock formations with frequently elevated tee boxes, and there is a surprising amount of elevation change.
Both courses are ranked in the top 100 by Golf Magazine. Monument was the original course conceived by Jay Morrish and Tom Weiskopf, the design that put Scottsdale’s desert courses on the world golf radar. It is famous for its iconic namesake towering boulder in the middle of the third fairway.
The second course here, Pinnacle, was not as beloved. It had a long gap between two holes that made it unwalkable and a decade after it opened, the two courses were rerouted.
Today, most of the two original front nines form Monument and most of the two backs are Pinnacle, so you have two walkable layouts of comparable quality, and can’t go wrong. Golf Magazine actually ranked the new Pinnacle higher, but most visiting golfers cannot resist the chance to tackle Monument’s photogenic signature hole.
The Boulders Resort & Spa Scottsdale
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One of Scottsdale’s northern suburbs is aptly named Carefree, home to one of the region’s longest-running luxury resorts, the 1,300-acre Boulders Resort & Spa, a Hilton Curio Collection hotel.
The resort got a massive, multimillion-dollar renovation in 2017, and the golf courses were improved to the tune of $4 million in 2022, with all new greens, bunkers and cart paths.
Interestingly, one new addition is an optional caddie program, rare in the region and fun if you have never played caddie golf before.
As its name suggests, The Boulders embraces its rocky, rugged desert setting, and all lodging is in irregularly shaped freestanding adobe casitas that look like they were dropped in from “The Flintstones.”
The Boulders Golf Club is one of the farthest from the city center and often overlooked by visitors not staying here, but should not be missed. The North and South courses are classics of Sonoran Desert golf, both by an architect very experienced in the genre, Jay Morrish. Even before the recent facelift, they were known for their beautiful, strategic designs, which were extremely well maintained and featured exquisite greens.
It’s tough to choose between them. Both showcase 12-million-year-old rock formations, with towering stacks of boulders set behind greens to frame approach shots. Boulders North is generally given a slight edge, and while the South is a little bit shorter, it has more water hazards, and they are both challenging. The resort also has a standout practice facility.