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Central Arizona Phoenix

Vistal Golf Club

Arizona Golf Authority AZGA Golf Course Buzz: Vistal Golf Club takes advantage of its central Phoenix location and offers up great golf and the best views of the city’s skyline from a fairway, anywhere in town.

Vistal Golf Club

Originally designed by Arizona golf legend Johnny Bulla, the golf course opened in 1957 as the Thunderbird Country Club. The course received a major redesign in 2000 by PGA Tour Design Services, who assigned local resident tour player consultants Howard Twitty, Tom Lehman and Billy Mayfair to the job.

The local boys produced a gem that re-opened in November of 2001 as the Vistal Golf Club to accolades all around. Quickly named a “Top 10 New Public Course in the U.S.” by Sports Illustrated, Vistal Golf Club was selected as the host course for two local U.S. Open qualifying tournaments.

Some of Bulla’s original holes remain intact, particularly on the front nine, and the new back nine winds up through the rugged mountain foothills while maintaining a traditional feel. Four sets of tees range from 7,013 to 5,235 yards with a rating of 72.9 and slope of 129 from the tips, 69.4 and 116 from the most forward tees. More than 80 bunkers add to the challenge and three lakes bring water into play on six holes, most notably at the third, the ninth and 18th.

Vistal entertains right from the start and begins with a birdie, a bogey and the anything from a 2 through “I’m in my pocket” third hole.

The 526-yard par-5 first features an elevated tee and fairway-pinching bunkers in the landing area. Negotiate them successfully and make a putt to bag an opening birdie. The second is a classic 440-yard par-4, straightaway; both the yardage and a swale in the center of the generous green produce a lot of bogeys here.

The par-3 third hole at Vistal is a birdie hole when the pin is left; but if the cup is cut in the right half of the green, you can make numbers that won’t fit on your card. Playing just 167 yards from the tips, 108 forward, the right half of the green is a lake-wrapped peninsula that demands precise yardage control from the tee. You can drown several pieces of ammo if you’re a bit short, a bit long or just a little bit right of your intended line of play. Tournament golf; play left and card a two-putt par – recreational golf; have some fun and have a go.

As you would expect, the PGA Tour player’s authored a strong finishing stretch at Vistal Golf Club. The 16th is 438-yard par-4 with an angry green surface devoid of a single flat spot more than 4-feet in diameter; it’s still a lot of fun to putt. The 17th is 597 yards of 5-par golf into the prevailing breeze in these parts; just play for par.

18th Green - Vistal Golf Club

The par-4 18th is a terrific tournament golf closer. Playing at 427 yards, the tee ball must be shaped into a fairway running on a diagonal to the tee, miss a little left and your second will be played from a bunker. A lake runs along the left side of the fairway, and the left side of the green wraps behind it, so depending on pin placement, you may need to carry it on the approach. Two well struck shots produce a routine birdie putt, but miss either shot just a hair and the leader board can change quite dramatically.

Vistal offers full practice facilities, complete with classic rock music piped in. After the round, the Blue Pig Patio is a good place to relax with excellent views of several holes and the Phoenix skyline in the distance.

Originally, some holes on the back-nine holes were located west of 7th Street. As part of the 2000 redesign, that property has been re-crafted as the Thunderbirds Par-3 Course and the official home of the First Tee of Phoenix program. Designed by Tom Fazio, the course plays at about 600 yards and level par of 27.

After golf, as long as you’re in the neighborhood, spend some time and check out two more Phoenix originals. The entrance to South Mountain Park is just down the street, south on Central Avenue, and you can make the short drive up to the 1,000-foot summit for the view; it’s spectacular, day or night.

And if you’re on south Central Avenue, at #8684 you’ll drive right past one of the best meals in town at the family owned and operated restaurant, Los Dos Molinos. Named by Victoria “The Two Grinders” for the chili grinders she and her husband Eddie each received from their grandmothers, this is hand-crafted New Mexico style cuisine presented in a small, homey atmosphere. The food is great because as Victoria says, “There’s no assembly line here, my daughters and I prepare each dish, with one helper at most.”

Read the Arizona Golf Authority AZGA Arizona Golf Course Review for every golf course in Arizona at www.arizonagolfauthority.com/coursedirectory.

It’s “All Things Arizona Golf” from the Arizona Golf Authority.

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Central Arizona Sun City

Riverview at Sun City Golf Course

Arizona Golf Authority AZGA Arizona Golf Course Buzz: Riverview is one of the five regulation-length courses, together with three executive courses, in the stable of the Recreation Centers of Sun City, which offers residents plenty of recreation options.

Designed by Jeff Hardin, who was involved in creating many adult-community courses around the state, Riverview opened in 1970 and is known for its tricky, undulating greens. The course has three sets of tees at 6,394, 6,053 and 5,558 yards and is rated at 69.6 with a slope of 116 from the back tees. While it isn’t particularly long, mature trees and a series of small lakes bring water into play on seven holes, placing a premium on accuracy.

Beginning with the third, water is in play on six consecutive holes; highlights of that stretch are the par-3 third and par-5 sixth. No. 3 plays at 147 yards from the back tee with a shot that must carry over a lake most of the way to a green guarded by a large bunker on the right side.

At the 6th you’ll find a sharp dogleg left with two lakes in play, one on the tee shot and another along the right side of the fairway. Several bunkers threaten both sides of the fairway and one more lurks in front of the green. At 534 yards, it is the longest hole on the course and the No. 1 handicap hole which means par is the goal here.

Standouts on the back nine are the par-4 12th and 15th. No. 12 is just 375 yards, but a lake along the right side of the fairway and green, plus bunkers left-front and right-front make for a challenging approach.

No. 15 plays a healthy 404-yards; a sweeping dogleg right where you can cut off plenty of yardage but the inside of the corner is well guarded by a bunker and palm trees.

Riverview has full practice facilities, including a large driving range, and serves breakfast and lunch items at its snack bar. The semi-private club is open to the public, but RCSC members can book tee times five days in advance and the public can book times three days out.

Along with golf at eight courses, club members also have access to fitness centers, spas, swimming pools, tennis and pickle ball courts, bocce ball courts, fishing, boating, shuffleboard, bowling centers and other activities.

Read the Arizona Golf Course List AZGA Player’s Arizona Golf Course Review for every golf course in Arizona at www.arizonagolfauthority.com/coursedirectory.

It’s “All Things Arizona Golf” from the Arizona Golf Authority.

Categories
Central Arizona Gilbert

Seville Golf & Country Club

Par-3 17th - Seville Golf and Country Club

Arizona Golf Authority AZGA Golf Course Buzz: Located about 40 miles southeast of downtown Phoenix, Seville offers a true country club experience at base of the San Tan Mountains, which provide a serene visual backdrop for the club.

Par-3 17th - Seville Golf and Country Club

Built in 2001, the layout was created by Gary Panks, one of Arizona’s best-known course architects. Mr. Panks has a particular knack for taking a relatively flat piece of property and shaping it into something special, and that’s what he did with this former citrus grove acreage. Many of those trees were transplanted and incorporated into the Seville course along with oaks and jacaranda, which line the fairways and bloom brilliantly in the spring.

Seville plays to level par of 72 and offers five sets of tees with the tips set at 7,060 yards and the front tees at 5,765. From the back, the course is rated at 72.8 with a slope of 128. The layout has a traditional feel although there is mild desert terrain in the transition areas that adds to the challenge when recovering from an errant shot.

Panks allows the player plenty of room in the primary landing areas on most tee shots; you won’t face the visual intimidation of forced carries inherent in desert target golf designs here. You will face several thrilling golf shots as you make your loop.

Highlights of the front nine are a pair of dogleg-right par-5s. No. 2 plays at 555 yards from the back tees and requires a tee shot over right-side fairway bunkers to reach the green in two. The wide, shallow green wraps around a front-bunker that collects most “run one on” attempts.

At the shorter 530-yard 5th, any attempt to reach the green in two must carry the corner of a sizable lake and bunker guarding the right side of the green. Three-shot players can lay-up left and ignore the lake altogether with their approach.

But the most memorable portion of a round at Seville is always the three-hole finishing stretch. The par-4 16th is just 315 yards but a lake defining the dogleg right fairway forces you to decide how much you can bite off and still clear the water. The green complex is elevated and includes a multi-tiered putting surface; great fun here.

In the middle of the lake you just finished playing around sits the par-3 17th. It’s a touch of TPC Sawgrass in Arizona; a 145-yard carry to a true island green that requires a high, soft, precise yardage tee shot. The putting surface is generous from front to back, and plenty wide as well; it just doesn’t look like it when you’re over the shot. Trust it’s big enough, remember to breathe and play away – as many times as it takes.

The 18th is a thrilling, risk-reward 5-par playing at a tempting 520 yards. You must thread an accurate tee shot between fairway bunkers short-right and long-left. For your second shot, your choice is whether to lay-up short of the water, or try to clear a lake that wraps around the left side of the green. Birdies are abundant here, although 7s are carded just as frequently.

Seville Golf and Country Club offers golf and non-golf memberships and has a wide range of amenities available to its members, including tennis, a fitness center, spa and swimming pools. Seville also offers fine dining at Bolero’s Restaurant and lighter fare at Tapa’s Bar, both of which are open to the public.  Seville is affiliated with the Club Corp. Network; members receive preferred access and discount pricing at more than 150 private clubs around the country.

Read the Arizona Golf Course List AZGA Player’s Arizona Golf Course Review for every golf course in Arizona at www.arizonagolfauthority.com/coursedirectory.

It’s “All Things Arizona Golf” from the Arizona Golf Authority.

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Central Arizona Phoenix

Raven Golf Club – Phoenix

Raven Golf Club - Phoenix

Arizona Golf Course Guide’s AZGA Arizona Golf Course Review: When the Raven Golf Club opened for play in 1995, the tectonic plates of the golf landscape in Phoenix shifted forever. Sure, high-quality golf course designs were already scattered around North Scottsdale’s foothills back then, but most were private country clubs designed for the exclusive enjoyment of the members and their lucky guests.

Raven Golf Club - Phoenix

The Raven boldly placed a first-class David Graham – Gary Panks layout right in the heart of Phoenix, added all the customer service the private places had, and then offered the same experience to daily-fee public players – Home Run.

Not only did the locals flock to the course, but due to its location near Sky Harbor International airport, avid traveling golfers always scheduled it for play on the day they arrived, or the day they were leaving town. Many outfits have copied the formula over the years, but no one in Phoenix does it better than the Raven – for two reasons: the golf course, and the staff.

First, the golf course. Wow!

Messrs. Graham and Panks were given a site along Baseline Road in a longstanding agricultural area near South Mountain historically cultivated as flower nurseries; the fields are directly adjacent to a major irrigation canal. They moved some earth, imported 6,000 Georgia Pine trees and produced a spectacular golf course that the editors at GolfWorld included on their 2009 List of the Top 50 Public Courses in the U.S.A and Golf Digest awarded 4.5 of the 5 possible stars they hand out. Trust us; you don’t buy your way into the rankings issued by those two groups.

The Raven – Phoenix is an ever entertaining and playable golf course from the middle tees, while providing a championship caliber test from the tips. At its full 7,078 yardage, the course rating is a healthy 72.8 and slope is 130. Two sets of middle tees offer a more comfortable rating of 70.5/125 from 6,722 yards and 68.1/119 from 6,264. The forward tees are set at 5,759 and the rating creeps back over par at 73/129.

Raven Golf Club – Phoenix is the model for the “member for a day” mantra you hear so often these days. Visit the expansive practice ground to loosen up and don’t be offended if you find the surfaces are better than the fairways you play on at home. Take plenty of time to prepare and be ready to play from the start because a stern 3-hole test appears early on the front-9.

Standing on the 3rd tee you’ll notice two things, a generous pine tree-lined fairway and not a single fairway bunker. You know what that means, and a glance at the tee marker will confirm your suspicion; it’s the strongest par-4 you’ll see all day and, at 477 yards, the No.1 handicap hole on the course. Resign yourself to a longish second and take solace in the fact that the Graham-Nash team provided a bunker-free green complex that accepts a long iron or hybrid shot-trajectory.

Now that your long game has been stretched out, No. 4, a 596-yard par-5 provides another chance to use it. The AZGA staff recommends we amateurs play this one as a three-shotter due to the elevated green complex. Approaching this green with a short iron ensures a more reliable result as deep bunkers menace the right half of this tiered green, both front and rear – sandy birdies are rare here.

The early 3-hole workout culminates at the 6th tee where the designers test another part of your game: your judgment. You’ve just played two holes that suggest “long ball is good” and now they tempt you with their 324-yard drivable par-4. The fairway doglegs sharply left-to-right around a menacing family of bunkers and the multi-tiered green sits just beyond them, tantalizingly exposing its wide but shallow-depth side to you from the tee; the deep long-axis of the green is angled some 60-degrees away from you, in line with the safer, dogleg fairway approach. Carry the bunkers and you’re home free, miss a bit and well, you know the drill. It’s your choice, and therein lies the fun.

The back-9 is a bit shorter and the layout offers several more choices about what shot to hit. Standouts are the 11th and the 15th. Tee boxes at the par-3 11th are placed from 195 to 112 yards and it’s one of the few golf holes where an amateur player might actually, consciously, genuinely reach the following conclusion – “You know, if I miss this green, after looking at the angry ocean-like undulating chipping area over there on the right, that bunker on the left doesn’t look so bad.” They’d be correct, too.

No. 15, a par-4 playing a modest 366 yards, is an elegant eye-candy golf hole disguising an intriguing choice about your tee shot. Challenge and stay short of the bunker, located just 250 yards from the tee and defining the gently sweeping left-to-right dogleg, and you’re left with a level lie and the full depth of a two-tiered, elevated green for your second. Drive your tee ball longer into the generous fairway left of the bunker and you’ll find everything but a level lie, and the green, now diagonal to your line of play, is a very shallow one-club target.

The Raven Golf Club – Phoenix is home to one of those rare golf courses where even if you did reach the milestone of playing every day, you would always be entertained by the course. Each day would bring a little different lie, a different shot angle, or a change in strategy off the tee; that’s the mark of thoughtful design and careful course routing.

And if you do show up every day, rest assured you’ll be in good hands. O.B Sports’ General Manager at the Raven – Phoenix, Derek Crawford, has been doing this for 30-years and he’s distilled the art and science of customer service to its essence.

“It’s simple really; my staff and I do whatever we can to enhance a guest’s experience today. It’s not hard to get over there and open a door for someone whose hands are full, or take a moment to smile and thank them for choosing to come over and play our course. We just believe that, in a world which seems a bit less civil today, the little things we do have a big impact on our guests”

How refreshing.

The Raven Golf Club – Phoenix also offers a well appointed Pro Shop and great food and beverage ambiance in the Raven Grill, as well as complete banquet services in their Event Pavilion overlooking the 18th hole.

After golf, as long as you’re in the neighborhood, spend some time and check out two more Phoenix originals. The entrance to South Mountain Park is just down the street, south on Central Avenue, and you can make the short drive up to the 1,000-foot summit for the view; it’s spectacular, day or night.

And if you’re on south Central Avenue, at #8684 you’ll drive right past one of the best meals in town at the family owned and operated restaurant, Los Dos Molinos. Named by Victoria “The Two Grinders” for the chili grinders she and her husband Eddie each received from their grandmothers, this is hand-crafted New Mexico style cuisine presented in a small, homey atmosphere. The food is great because as Victoria says, “There’s no assembly line here, my daughters and I prepare each dish, with one helper at most.”

Visit our Arizona Golf Course Directory List and read the AZGA Player’s Review for every golf course in Arizona at www.arizonagolfauthority.com/coursedirectory/; it’s “All Things Arizona Golf” from the Arizona Golf Authority.

Categories
Central Arizona Phoenix

Arizona Country Club

Arizona Golf Authority AZGA Golf Course Buzz: History abounds at Arizona Country Club, a private facility that has more than 100 years of tradition, including hosting the Phoenix Open 10 times between 1955 and 1973 (Phoenix Country Club also hosted the event during that period). The course has been graced by some of the all-time greats in PGA Tour history, with Arnold Palmer winning the Phoenix Open title on this course three consecutive years.

The club actually began as the former Ingleside Golf Resort, a nine-hole layout which featured sand and oil greens just north of the current location. A new course was built in the late 1920s, and was re-designed by Willie Wansa and Ernest Suggs in 1946, when it re-opened as a private club. It has undergone four renovations over the years, with the most recent being a $15 million project that was completed in 2006. Legendary pro Johnny Bulla made the most significant design changes in 1964 and Gary Stevenson oversaw a modernization project in 1999 that included revamping tees, bunkers and putting surfaces.

Arizona Country Club’s setting, near the heart of Phoenix and Scottsdale historic districts, offers some splendid views of the landmark Camelback Mountain and Papago buttes. Water comes into play on five holes of the course that features smallish, undulating greens and are known as some of the “purest” in the Valley of the Sun.

The unusual layout has a combination of eight par-4 holes, five par 5s and five par 3s; three of each form the front nine. With 117 acres of irrigated turf, there is ample room to crank up the driver, and although errant shots don’t end up in desert ravines here, the 1,800 mature trees create plenty of challenges. There are three sets of tees at 6,756, 6,319 and 5,558 yards, and the course is rated at 72.2 with a slope of 130 from the back.

Arizona Country Club features its own version of “Amen Corner” at holes 10 through 12. The 10th is the longest par 5 at 600 yards and tough to reach in two shots. It features a fairway guarded by trees and two large fairway bunkers on the right, and a two-tiered green with a stone waterfall flowing into the water hazard that guards the front and two bunkers in back.

The 11th is the signature hole and the longest par 3 at 195 yards. A large lake protects the front and right of the green, a large bunker guards the left side and there are two more bunkers behind.

The trifecta is completed by the 12th hole, a 436-yard par 4 with a dogleg right guarded on both sides of the fairway by trees and a large, tiered green protected by four bunkers. Play this stretch in even par and you deserve an “Amen” from your playing partners.

The most recent renovation also included redesigning and expanding the two-story clubhouse, which spans 60,000 square feet in a project directed by award-winning architect Doug Fredrikson. Amenities at the club include swimming pools, tennis courts, a health and fitness center, spa and a separate “Kids Klubhouse”.

Arizona Country Club offers exclusive fine dining with an impressive wine cellar as well as casual dining at the bar and grill. Several memberships are available, including junior, sports and social, along with full golf memberships.

Read the Arizona Golf Course Directory AZGA Buzz for every golf course in Arizona at www.arizonagolfauthority.com/coursedirectory/; it’s “All Things Arizona Golf ” from the Arizona Golf Authority.