Town Rankings / Arizona

The Best Golf Courses in Marana

For a few years, this stretch of desert northwest of Tucson was the center of the golf television universe. The WGC Match Play, the best field in the sport playing knockout golf among the saguaros, lived at Dove Mountain. Before that, the Gallery across the valley held it. Marana did not stumble into that. The desert here, rocky and vertical in the Tortolita Mountains, photographs like nowhere else in Arizona, and the courses built into it were made to be looked at as much as played.

That TV era is over, and Marana golf now is what remains when the cameras leave: two private and resort properties, three courses between them, all of them cut from the same dramatic ground. This ranking rewards the golf first, then the day, then access. Access is the problem child here, and we will not pretend otherwise.

1The Gallery Golf Club North Course

The North Course at the Gallery is the connoisseur's pick in Marana, and the one we would play if we could play only one. The club hosted the Match Play before the event moved to Dove Mountain, which means this property was stress-tested by the exact format that exposes weak design: head-to-head golf, where a hole that cannot swing a match gets found out fast. The Gallery survived that audit, and the North is the course its members point to first.

The land helps. The Gallery's ground rolls more than its neighbor's, the desert frames shots without squeezing them, and the round feels like a walk through the Tortolitas rather than an obstacle course built on top of them. The concession is access: the Gallery is private, and the North Course is a member's world. We rank golf, not tee-time availability, and on golf the North Course is Marana's best. But know what you are looking at: a photograph for most readers, not a booking.

2Dove Mountain Ritz-Carlton Golf Club

Dove Mountain is the famous name, the Match Play's later home, 27 holes attached to a Ritz-Carlton in the high desert. The courses climb into rocky canyons, saguaros crowd the edges, and the margin for error on a loose swing is a lost ball and a drop. Tour players complained about the severity in March winds and the event eventually left, but severity was also the spectacle. Every match turned on shots that could go badly wrong.

Here is the honest split: the resort setting and the conditioning are the best visitor experience in Marana, and if you are booking a trip rather than reading a ranking, this may be your No. 1 because it is the one you can actually play as a resort guest. It lands second here because the Gallery North is the better walk for a strong player, less punishing for its own sake, more interested in your good shots than your bad ones.

3The Gallery Golf Club South Course

The South Course is the members' second eighteen at the Gallery, friendlier than the North, built for the daily game rather than the televised one. In most Arizona towns a course of this quality, on this land, would fight for the top spot. In Marana it is third, which tells you more about the company than about the course.

The knock is that everything the South does, the North does with more character, and a visitor with one Gallery invitation will always spend it on the North. Fair. But a ranking that only counts the round you would play once misses the round members play two hundred times. The South earns its line here.

Three courses, two addresses, one valley of rock and saguaro. Marana's TV years ended, but the ground that attracted the cameras is still there, and it does not need a broadcast to make its point.