County Rankings / Arizona
The Best Golf Courses in Maricopa County, Arizona
Maricopa County has 64 courses on our list. Phoenix and Scottsdale hold more golf than most states, so the interesting question is what kind of desert golf wins. This county invented the genre twice: in 1962, when the first real desert course was built in Carefree, and in the 2000s, when architects started building desert courses you could walk, with no houses in the frame. Our ranking puts the original first. For the wider picture, see the Arizona state ranking.
1Desert Forest Golf Club
Designed by Robert Red Lawrence and opened in 1962 in Carefree, Desert Forest is widely considered the first quality desert course built in America. It has no fairway bunkers and no water hazards. Read that again. The founding desert course defends itself with narrow fairways and small pushed up greens at 7,201 yards, par 72, below Black Mountain, and it hosted the 1990 U.S. Senior Amateur and the 2007 U.S. Women's Mid-Amateur. A $3 million renovation led by David Zinkand in 2013 kept the idea intact. Everything target golf became later, the forced carries and island targets, started as a reaction against this restraint. We score the golf first, and the original still wins.
2Saguaro Course
Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw built the Saguaro Course at We-Ko-Pa in 2006, five years after the club's Cholla Course, and Golfweek ranked it No. 1 among Arizona public courses in its 2026 list. It was built as a links style layout meant for walking, with short distances from greens to tees, on Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation land with no homes, roads, or businesses interrupting the desert. We-Ko-Pa means Four Peaks in the Yavapai language, for the range visible to the east. At about 6,966 yards it wins on placement and ground game rather than force, and it is the best public round in the county.
3The Estancia Club
Tom Fazio designed Estancia in 1995 at the base of Pinnacle Peak, inside a 600 acre gated community in Scottsdale. It was named Golf Digest's Best New Private Course of 1996, plays par 72 at 7,146 yards with a rating of 73.7 and a slope of 137, and has been ranked among the best courses in America and in Arizona ever since. Membership is capped at 298 full golf members. If Desert Forest is desert golf as discipline, Estancia is desert golf as polish, Fazio framing Pinnacle Peak golf at full production value.
4Cochise Course
Jack Nicklaus built Cochise in 1988 as the second course at Desert Mountain, and it hosted The Tradition, a Senior PGA Tour major, for over a decade, plus the Charles Schwab Cup Championship in 2012, 2014, and 2016. Par 72, 7,048 yards, with a signature 7th hole of 215 yards to an elevated peninsula green. It has been ranked in Golf Digest's America's 100 Greatest. Of the six Nicklaus courses at Desert Mountain, Cochise carries the championship record, and in a county full of private clubs it holds its place on resume as much as design.
5Phoenix Country Club
The club was founded in 1899, before Arizona statehood, and Harry Collis's 18 holes opened in 1921 at Thomas Road and 7th Street with a routing that remains unchanged. It hosted the Phoenix Open from 1932 to 1986, with champions including Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Ben Hogan, and Johnny Miller, and it now hosts the Charles Schwab Cup Championship, the PGA Tour Champions season finale. Par 71 at a shade under 6,900 yards, small old school greens with fall off edges, and a Tom Lehman and John Fought redesign in 2002 that preserved the bones. Downtown parkland in a desert county, and proud of it.
6Quintero Golf Club
Rees Jones designed Quintero in 2000 in remote desert northwest of Phoenix near Lake Pleasant, and Golfweek ranks it No. 2 among Arizona public courses. Golf Digest has listed it among America's 100 Greatest Public Courses. The appeal is isolation and drama: untouched desert scenery and large elevation drops on a par 72 layout in Peoria, far enough from Scottsdale that the round feels like a trip rather than an appointment. Public golfers who can only play one upscale round in the county argue between Saguaro and Quintero, and the honest answer is that Saguaro is the better architecture and Quintero is the bigger landscape.
7Troon Country Club
Jay Morrish and Tom Weiskopf designed Troon in the mid 1980s, it was established in 1986, and Golf Digest named it the best new private course in America for that year. It was one of the first desert courses in the Scottsdale area and Weiskopf's first design effort. It spent ten years on Golf Digest's 100 Greatest list from 1989 to 1998, plays par 72 at 7,041 yards with a slope of 146, and sits at 2,400 feet below Pinnacle Peak and Troon Mountain. The layout is playable in the Weiskopf way, with room to run the ball onto many greens, guarded by cactus filled desert if you stray.
8Papago Golf Club
Papago is the people's course of this ranking: a City of Phoenix municipal designed by William Francis Billy Bell and opened in 1963 in Papago Park, at the base of the Papago Buttes. It has been the home course for Arizona State University golf since 2018, hosted the 1971 U.S. Amateur Public Links, received a $5.9 million renovation in 2008, and was named the 2020 Arizona Golf Course of the Year. At par 72 and up to about 7,333 yards it is long considered the finest municipal course in Arizona. Eighth on this list, first in the county in what public golf should be.
Below these eight the bench is deep: TPC Scottsdale's stadium golf, the other Nicklaus courses at Desert Mountain, We-Ko-Pa's Cholla Course, and Adobe at the Biltmore, a William P. Bell parkland from 1928. Start at the top, where a course with no fairway bunkers and no water has been winning the argument since 1962.
The county's two famous corridors are ranked on their own terms in our Scottsdale town ranking, which takes the resort argument course by course.