PHOENIX --The 2010 pilgrimage to "Golf Mecca" took us to four very distinct courses. We played ASU Karsten, Trilogy at Vastancia, the Monument Course at Troon North and The Saguaro at We Ko Pa.
These courses represent a fine cross section of the golf available to you in both course layout and budget in the sprawling Phoenix metro area. There are a great number of high-end resort courses that are extremely expensive, particularly by Milwaukee standards, but with a little help from the tee time broker Web site Golfnow.com, you can find substantial savings on most of these courses.
Trilogy At Vistancia
27980 N. Trilogy Blvd., Peoria (623) 215-6315
Such was the case with the Trilogy at Vistancia, where my playing companions that afternoon were talking about "getting their 120 bucks worth," and I didn't have the heart to tell them that the third member of their foursome was playing for half of that fee.
The Trilogy is located west of Sun City, far north of Phoenix. I drove from my downtown accommodations via Grand Ave., which is similar to Forest Home or Appleton Avenues here in town. It is a vast radial spoke which heads outward from the city at an angle, intersecting neighborhoods both affluent and burdened, industrial and retail corridors and a seemingly endless parade of "Gentlemens Clubs."
For those of you that haven't been introduced to Sun City, it is a sprawling tract of land that was developed as a retirement community, where golf carts share the streets with autos and there seems to be a golf course every thee blocks running along side the cookie-cutter dwellings.
The Trilogy was anything but a cookie-cutter course. It is an eminently fair course that challenges you without beating your brains out. It is a links style course that will feel quite familiar to the Milwaukee area player. Winding its way through several developments, there are no real dramatic elevation changes and bunkering is sporadic.
ASU Karsten Golf Course
1125 E. Rio Salado Parkway, Tempe, (480) 921-8070
If someone were to ask me which course they should play first upon arriving in Phoenix after a long winter layoff, I would tell them to take a 10 minute drive from SkyHarbor and head to the ASU Karsten course in Tempe. It's a great place to knock the rust off your swing.
There are numerous courses out here that simply ooze money when you hit the clubhouse, the parking lots bejeweled with cars that approach the average cost of a house in Milwaukee, but ASU Karsten is not one of these courses. Owned and operated by the Arizona State University, this place has a breezy collegial feel to it, from the guys in the pro shop, to the bartenders, cart girls, bag attendants and even the maintenance guys, everyone exuded a great and friendly attitude.
The course is part of ASU's impressive sports complex and is just beyond the shadow of the magnificent Sun Devil Stadium. Designed as a parklands style course by Pete Dye (architect of both Whistling Straits courses here in Wisconsin), it was a lush green the day we played. It is a 7,000 yard course from the professional tees, but the next set of markers, called the championship, are a very reasonable 6288 yards. You don't need to be long off the tee to post a good score.
The course eases you in with some five straight par fours, all quite reachable in two without a great deal of trouble to be had. Bunkers are plentiful, but not outrageous. The fringe around the greens on every hole is very thick and can definitely jump up and bite you if your wedge play is weak.
As famous as Dye is for it, there are not a great deal of water hazards on the course, but where you find them, they definitely gives you pause. The tee boxes on nine and 18 sit side by side and test your courage as each run along opposite sides of the same lake, each respectively daring you to try and play a draw or a fade over that lake to cut your distance to the pin.
Overall, though I would never tell you it's an easy track, I would tell you that there is something familiar feeling about this course to those of us that play in the Milwaukee area, and that it is an excellent choice before you go on to tackle some of the really demanding courses in the area.
Don't forget to check out the wall of fame in the clubhouse, featuring current PGA tour stars Phil Mickelson, Chez Reavie, Jeff Quinney and Billy Mayfair along with a host of others -- it's a reminder that this very reasonably priced course was where many of the pro's cut their teeth.
We-Ko-Pa Golf Club
18200 E. Toh Vee Circle, Fort McDowell, (480) 836-9000
My friend Bryan, a course superintendent and golf design geek, asked me which courses I'd be playing this year. When I told him that We-ko-Pa Saguaro was on the docket, he sounded wistful when he told me I was going to enjoy it.
It was easy to see why Bryan was starry eyed. Located way east of Phoenix in Fort McDowell, the Saguaro along with its sister course, the Cholla, is built on an underdeveloped stretch of Sonoran desert owned by the Yavapai Nation. This facility is world class. It opened to rave reviews in late 2006 and was immediately crowned "One of the Top 10 Public Courses in America" the following year.
Ascending up a small outcropping in the desert, the starters hut/ Saguaro mini clubhouse comes into view and is the starting point for your journey down into the Ben Crenshaw/Bill Coore authored design. This course is a beautiful brute, swooping and soaring along the desert terrain. By today's standards, at a maximum of 6,912 yards, it isn't fiendishly long, but it tests your game in a million other ways. You will hit every club in your bag.
After some success on the first two holes, I got a little cocky and decided to play from the back tees -- and the course made me pay for my arrogance. There is almost a forced carry of scrub brush and rock wash on every hole. Fairways slope away into trouble and if you cannot hit to spots, you will be in for a long round. That is not too say that the fairways are small, because they are fairly generous, but if you have holes in your game, this course is happy to expose them.
However, you will not mind as much because you will be mesmerized by the beauty of the course. Reviews often talk of "signature holes," which are the showy peacock holes that every golf club can display on their Web sites and publications, but at the Saguaro, all the holes qualify. The Yavapai Nation has publicly stated that there will be no development on this land ever, so there are no homes anywhere to be found. Just you, your friends and amazing panoramas of four different mountain ranges surrounding you. It is a an experience to savor.
Troon North Golf Club Our final golf experience of Phoenix 2010 was a highly anticipated trip to Troon North Monument Course in the Scottsdale on the awesomely named Dynamite Road. Two years ago, my playing partner Paul and I missed out on an opportunity to play the Monument because of a scheduling issue and we weren't sure if we would ever make it back.
This is the grandaddy of modern desert golf courses, and has been around since 1989. The Tom Weiskopf/Jay Morrish design is dazzling.
It is an arduous 18. Standing on the tee box at hole one, I was more than a little bit worried about mishitting my drive into one of the million dollar homes which flank the fairway on both sides. As a once a year desert course player, I find it takes me a good three or four holes just to get settled in and not get eaten up by worry.
There is a lot of pain awaiting you on this meticulously maintained course if you are not on top of your swing. Bunkers and boulders abound. The desert will swallow an errant ball after first batting it around from cactus rock to cactus. The greens are in excellent shape, but played a bit slower than expected on the day we played. The namesake par five "Monument" hole is a sweeping dogleg left with a massive three-story boulder right smack dab in the middle of the fairway. It a requires quite long drive to play past it or a deft long iron, fairway wood to land at the corner between the Monument and a large swath of ironwood, cactus and other impenetrable desert fauna.
Each of the holes are named individually after some characteristic that defines them and planted little seeds of worry in me with names like "Hell Bunker," "Spanish Dagger" and "Illusion." Many of the teeboxes are elevated, giving you a great view of the hole, and of all the trouble available to you, but it is also difficult to tune out some inspiring architecture that borders on the course at every turn. I was struck by how back the future it all was, multimillion dollar homes made to look in the style of Indian stucco dwellings, many incorporating boulders into their organic design, a sea of earth tones with Ferraris in the driveway.
This is resort golf at its finest and it comes with a hefty price tag, but as Ferris Bueller famously said, "If you have the means, I highly recommend it."
For those of you that may be in Scottsdale in May through September though, the course can be played for more than 50 percent of its normal $200 greens fees.
10320 E. Dynamite Blvd., Scottsdale, AZ (480) 585-5300
