SCOTTSDALE, Arizona – Aaron Read, an avid 5.9 handicap amateur player, teamed-up with his San Francisco-based father, Larry, in the 2012 Scottsdale Open, presented by Waste Management, with the intention of enjoying Scottsdale’s warm winter sunshine while spending some quality time together, playing Scottsdale’s finest golf courses in competitive amateur tournament conditions.
Winning a $50-thousand dollar Infiniti convertible at the tournament was a complete surprise.
During the second tournament round, Aaron aced the par-3 16th hole at Grayhawk Golf Club’s Raptor course, which just happened to be the Infiniti of Scottsdale Hole-In-One Challenge hole. For that perfect 186-yard 8-iron effort, Aaron became the proud owner of a brand new 2012 Infiniti G37 convertible.
“It was a pure shot” said Aaron, “it was tracking all the way, took one hop and crawled in the cup.”
Aaron shared he’s carded two career aces, and that he was a “wee bit worried” about how much it would cost him when he arrived at Grayhawk’s famous Phil’s Grill clubhouse bar after the round. He ended up well ahead of the game when the professional staff members at both Grayhawk and the Waste Management Scottsdale Open graciously covered the tab.
We’re scoring that as roughly 50-thousand under-par.
Aaron and Ken Schatzberg, GM Infiniti of Scottsdale
On Tuesday, March 13th, Aaron, along with Tournament Promotions of Arizona owner, Rich Heller, arrived at Infiniti of Scottsdale to pick up his keys from General Manager Ken Schatzberg.
“We thought the Scottsdale Open would be a lot of fun, especially playing the TPC Scottsdale Stadium in Phoenix Open tournament conditions with all the grandstands in place,” said Read. “But the experience of winning a new car was unreal.”
Tournament Promotions of Arizona provides Hole in One Coverage and has been based right here in the Valley since 1995. They provide not only event coordinators, but many dealerships across the state with affordable Hole In One coverage for events they run or sponsor.
“I am always happy, especially when one of our participating dealerships, like Infiniti of Scottsdale, is able to give away a car,” said Rich Heller, Owner of Tournament Promotions. “Ken Schatzberg has been a customer of ours for years and I believe this was his first. It was fantastic to hand over a check to him.”
This is the second hole in one in less than three months for Tournament Promotions as they awarded a 2012 Cadillac at the Fresh Start Women’s Foundation Golf Event last November.
New Infiniti G37 Owner Aaron Read
“It’s been a crazy three months, no doubt,” said Heller, “and we hope the string of good luck continues for our customers.”
Well, Aaron hasn’t admitted to any luck as of yet, but has assured us he’s enjoying his new ride and savoring the three days spent with his Dad playing the 2012 Waste Management Scottsdale Open every time he gets behind the wheel of his new ride.
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, then added all the customer service the private places had and offered the 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 – Phoenix 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 outfits.
The Raven Golf Club – 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. Expert golf instruction is available from the Jeff Ritter Golf & Martin Chuck Tour Striker Golf Academy.
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.”
The Raven Golf Club – Phoenix is another Excellent Arizona Golf Adventure.
PHOENIX, Arizona – PING officially introduced its new Nome™ putter on March 1st, but it made headlines earlier than that when PING Staff Member Hunter Mahan won the Tucson’s WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship using a Nome that he put into play on Monday of the event.
“It felt great immediately and it gave me a lot of confidence so I could just trust my aim and stroke the ball freely,” said Mahan, who added the putter to his bag after an alignment-testing session with PING’s Senior Player Development Manager Matt Rollins. “Long putts, big-breaking putts. I felt like I could make just about any putt I looked at.” All week in interviews, he credited the Nome for his exceptional putting on the fast, undulating greens that yielded him 35 birdies.
The putter, which is precision milled from high-grade aluminum and features tungsten weighting in the sole, arrives in golf shops around the world beginning in early April and is available in standard and belly-length versions.
The Nome’s ability to improve aim is a result of the putter’s black alignment bar and contrasting white sightline. Its extreme forgiveness comes from a lightweight, high-grade aluminum frame featuring tungsten sole weighting that optimizes the CG position and elevates MOI, making the Nome highly accurate. Three different shaft bends are available to fit Straight, Slight Arc, or Strong Arc putting strokes.
Golfers can determine their stroke type using the iPING Fit™ feature on the club maker’s new iPING™ putter app, a free download through the App Store™. Matching the putter model with stroke type is a new form of putter fitting that PING calls Fit For Stroke™. The company’s research has found that when the putter model matches a player’s stroke type, the putting stroke becomes more consistent which is a primary key to making more putts. Visit PING.com
Nome Technical specifications:
– Nome 355 grams, standard version (Available early April 2012)
– Nome 405 grams, belly version (Available late April 2012)
– Precision milled from high-grade aluminum and finished with a highly durable nano nickel coating
– Fit For Stroke: Three shaft bends designed to match Straight, Slight Arc, and Strong Arc putting strokes
– Available RH and LH
– U.S. MSRP: Standard-length model = $270.00; Belly model = $320.00
Legends Tour Brings Hall Of Famers To Grandview Golf Course
BOSTON, February 14, 2012 – At least five World Golf Hall of Fame members will be in the field when the Legends Tour, the LPGA’s official tour for professionals age 45 and over, launches its 2012 season this April in the Greater Phoenix area.
Walgreens LPGA Charity Golf Classic
The Legends Tour will kick off the year with the inaugural Walgreens Charity Classic in Sun City West. The tournament will be staged from April 27-29, at Grandview Golf Course and will feature LPGA and World Golf Hall of Famers Amy Alcott, Pat Bradley, Patty Sheehan, and Phoenix-area resident Betsy King.
Hollis Stacy, who will be inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in May, also will be in the field. Stacy won 18 tournaments in 26 years on the LPGA Tour, including three U.S. Women’s Open titles.
“The LPGA Legends Tour is pleased to bring this new tournament to Sun City West,” said Legends Tour CEO Jane Blalock. “The Greater Phoenix community has hosted the LPGA for many years and will once again be able to welcome some of the greatest names in women’s golf at this event. We are very proud to partner with Walgreens at this tournament to help raise funds for the Phoenix Children’s Hospital.”
Arizona-based Legends Tour players in the field also include France’s Anne-Marie Palli and Sherri Turner, both of Phoenix, and Tucson residents Cindy Rarick and Christa Johnson. Other headliners in the field will include former LPGA stars Rosie Jones, Liselotte Neumann, Sherri Steinhauer and Val Skinner, who currently works as an on-course reporter for The Golf Channel.
The Walgreens Charity Classic will feature a purse of $200,000 with a field of 40 players. A pro-am is set for Friday, April 27, followed by 36 holes of stroke-play competition on Saturday and Sunday, April 28-29. Tee times will start each day at 9 a.m.
The Phoenix Children’s Hospital will serve as the tournament’s charity, benefiting from all tournament proceeds. Tickets are $10 each day, with kids 17-under admitted free. Active military are also admitted free with a current ID.
For more information, visit thelegendstour.com. Tickets can be purchased via the website or at local Walgreen’s stores beginning March 1, 2012.
Click Grandview Golf Course to visit our Arizona Golf Course Directory List and read the AZGA Player’s Review for every golf course in Arizona.
Now that I’ve visited The Grand Del Mar, when I think of San Diego, images of delectable wines vie for prominence with those famous beaches. Addison, Grand Del Mar’s signature restaurant, features a 3,300-label wine list which has earned the Wine Spectator Grand Award for several years. And no wonder.
Wine Director Jesse Rodriguez came from the Napa Valley’s French Laundry. Before that, he served as sommelier at Mary Elaine’s at the Phoenician. Let’s just say, he knows his wines. And he loves to share his knowledge with interested patrons. Count me in!
Expect to find a diverse list, 60% international to 40% domestic, from prestigious producers to exciting limited production discoveries. With our appetizers, Rodriguez poured a crisp Pinot Grigio from the small Scarpetta winery in Napa Valley, inspired by the white wines of Italy. Always seeking to increase customers’ enjoyment, he has expanded the selection of half bottles, enabling a couple to enjoy some diversity of wine choices with their gourmet meal.
I was impressed with the privately blended wines prepared especially for the hotel. We enjoyed an elegant Pinot Noir from Silacci Vineyard in Monterey County, California, which was bottled exclusively for Addison by Miura Vineyards. I tasted vibrant currant and cranberry flavors, which beautifully complemented the rack of lamb entrée. The private bottling collection numbers close to 20 wines.
Did I mention that Addison is located in the clubhouse of The Grand Golf Club? Wow, what a clubhouse. Addison has its own circular driveway and entrance and includes a cozy library-type space, a piano bar and fabulous dining room overlooking the Tom Fazio-designed golf course. It’s a wonderful course with elevations that allow for far-reaching vistas. I fell in love with it and the demo driver I used all weekend. The driver came home with me. Unlike most vacation purchases, the novelty has not worn off. I hit it a mile.
In my book, the resort gets high marks for having a Wine Director who’s played St. Andrews! Add to that myriad other marks of excellence, and it’s easy to see why Grand Del Mar earned the Forbes Travel Guide Five-Star Hotel rating for 2012, as well as the AAA Five Diamond Award. Visit www.thegranddelmar.com
Cori Brett is a Scottsdale-based golf travel and lifestyle writer. Visit www.coribrett.com
Jim McLean Gof School – SunRidge Canyon Golf Course
Fountain Hills, Arizona – Greater Scottsdale’s list of Ivy League golf schools just became more prestigious with the debut of the Jim McLean Golf School at the Keith Foster-designed SunRidge Canyon Golf Club . The instruction facility is located on SunRidge Canyon’s practice facility with a permanent structure to be built in 2012 to house the school activities. McLean’s stable of instructors began teaching students in November 2011 with frequent visits from McLean as his calendar permits.
Jim McLean has long been recognized as one of the top golf instructors in the world, named 1994 PGA Teacher of The Year, and currently ranked No.3 by Golf Digest, among many other distinctions. Along with the world’s best database of golf swing clips and video content, Jim McLean has completed more than 35 years of research on the golf swing.
Using corridors of success and safety zones, Jim McLean’s teaching system can accommodate a variety of golf swings. Every student that attends a Jim McLean golf school or lesson will improve their game and leave with an organized plan for improvement. On average students improve their handicap by 4.6 strokes after taking a golf school program. Golf Schools feature The 8-Step Swing®, The Slot Swing™, X-Factor®, Y-Factor™, and Powerline.
Jim McLean & SunRidge Owners Don & Cindy Misheff
McLean’s stable of instructors teaches golfers how to improve their game with lessons ranging from a 30-minute “pre/post round” golf lesson to a one-day “ultimate” golf program, which includes seven hours of instruction, playtime and analysis.
In addition, the school offers two- and three-day programs that fully immerse students into McLean’s cutting-edge game-improvement methods.
Scottsdale, Arizona – Golf For Cause, 85 Broads Phoenix and NAWMBA are hosting “Understanding Golf for Your Business,” a seminar for professional women who want to develop business relationships through golf.
The seminar includes a casual golf experience with a mentor in each foursome, designed especially for newer golfers to help them feel at ease on the tees, as well as a presentation on capitalizing on the business success to be had on the golf course
The event takes at Talking Stick Golf Club in Scottsdale on Thursday, March 29, 2012 from 3-5:30pm. There is also an optional skills clinic from 1:30 – 2:15pm. Seminar cost is $75 per person and an additional $15 if you take part in the skills clinic.
Carefree, Arizona – The Boulders, a Waldorf Astoria Resort, is providing the perfect reason to wake up and smell the roses – or the fresh double-cut greens – as Scottsdale/Carefree welcomes world-class springtime golf.
The Resort’s One for All package lets you enjoy golf daily on the resort’s two award-winning, 18-hole golf courses designed by Jay Morrish. Nestled in the heart of the Sonoran Desert, the demanding courses provide golfers with panoramic views of the breathtaking scenery unique to the greater Scottsdale area, including the 12 million-year-old granite boulders scattered about the Boulders desert setting.
In addition to unlimited golf, enjoy luxurious accommodations in one of several accommodation offerings, range privileges and unlimited access to tennis facilities, access to the spa facilities, and one 50-minute Golden Door massage per night.
If a beautiful and tranquil setting, amazing golf and lots of pampering sound like what you need, just telephone 888.579.2631 or visit www.theboulders.com.
PEORIA, ARIZ. – The Antigua Group, Inc.- one of the nation’s leading designers and marketers of genuine golf and sports apparel under the distinguished Antigua brand-has been named the official apparel of the 2nd Annual RR Donnelley LPGA Founders Cup.
Antigua Group
Antigua apparel and headwear will be used in all aspects of the 72-hole tournament, whose field of players will compete March 12-18 at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge Resort and Spa in Phoenix, Ariz.
Players in the Founders Cup will be competing for a $1.5 million dollar purse as well as a promise of $500,000 to be donated to the LPGA-USGA Girls Golf Program.
“We are excited and honored by the chance to be an official supplier for the RR Donnelley LPGA Founders Cup,” says Ron McPherson, President and CEO of Antigua. “The inaugural event was great, and the new 72-hole event for 2012 will be fantastic!”
About the RR Donnelley LPGA Founders Cup
RR Donnelley, the LPGA and its players truly confirmed ’Why It’s Different Out Here’ in 2011, making golf history by not only remembering the women that made the LPGA a reality, but also by “paying-it-forward” and playing entirely for charity and the expansion of the Girls Golf program,” LPGA Commissioner Michael Whan said. “Next season, with RR Donnelley’s vision, we will prove that the Founders Cup sequel is even better than the original.”
Tickets can be purchased online at www.LPGAFounders.com or by calling1-888-LPGATIX (574-2849). Children 17 and under will receive free tournament admission with a ticketed adult. Active military members and their immediate families can receive free tournament admission when showing a valid active military ID at the main admission gate.
