# The Best Golf Courses in Paradise Valley

Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-paradise-valley-az/

[The Course Rankings](/)

Town Rankings / Arizona


A deep sand bunker guarding a green. Photo: Santeri Viinamäki, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Paradise Valley is the wealthiest small town in Arizona, a wedge of estates between Camelback Mountain and Mummy Mountain where the lots are measured in acres and the golf is measured in invitations. Most of its golf is private or attached to resorts that guard their tee sheets. What makes the town interesting for a ranking is the exception at the bottom of this list, an 18-hole par-3 course that might be the most fun you can have in the Valley with a golf club in your hand.

We score the golf first, then the day, then access and value. In Paradise Valley that order produces a list with an old private club, two resort courses sharing one name, and a short course that punches absurdly above its yardage. Good. Rankings should occasionally look like that.

## 1Paradise Valley Country Club

The town's namesake club is the real thing: an old-line private course in the shadow of Camelback, built for members who play constantly and judge a course by how it holds up in February of its fiftieth year, not by its opening-day photographs. The golf is classic parkland-desert, walkable, strategic in the quiet way, and the setting under the mountain is the one every resort in the Valley tries to rent.

The concession is the obvious one. It is private, estimates put initiation well into six figures, and we say estimates because the club publishes nothing. If you get the invitation, this is the round. Most readers will not get the invitation, which is why the rest of this list exists, and why No. 2 has a genuine argument.

## 2Camelback Golf Club Ambiente Course

Ambiente is the eco-forward Camelback course, built on the idea that an Arizona golf course should use less water, carry more native ground, and let the desert back inside the ropes instead of walling it out with turf. That is a philosophy statement, and the good news is the golf backs it up: firmer, more rumpled, more choices off the tee than the manicured resort golf Arizona usually sells.

Resort guests can book it, which in this town is half the battle. It lands second because the country club's golf and setting are a half-step richer, but here is the argument you will hear, and it is respectable: Ambiente is the most interesting course in Paradise Valley that money and a phone call can get you on. We do not fully disagree. We just rank the club first.

## 3Camelback Golf Club Padre Course

Padre is the traditional half of the Camelback pair, the older, softer, more manicured resort course, palms and water and the mountain arranged behind the greens like a postcard the resort has been mailing for decades. As a pure test it gives ground to Ambiente on almost every hole. As a pleasant morning with a spouse or a client, it gives ground to almost nothing in the Valley.

Third place is the honest spot. Padre is the course Ambiente was built to argue with, and a ranking should keep the argument visible rather than pretend the older course vanished.

## 4Mountain Shadows Short Course

Eighteen holes, all par 3s, and the valley's best short walk. Mountain Shadows is the round you can finish in under three hours, the gambling game with friends after lunch, the course where a beginner and a scratch player can compete without anyone pretending the format is fair. Short courses live or die on their greens and their variety of yardages, and this one was built as a real golf course, not a garnish for a hotel.

It is fourth because par-3 golf is a different sport and this ranking covers the full-size game. But pound for pound, hour for hour, it might deliver more actual fun than anything above it. Some afternoons that is the only ranking that matters.

The light goes off Camelback Mountain early in winter, the long shadows reach the fairways, and Paradise Valley golf, private gates and all, goes quiet in the prettiest hour of the Arizona day.

**Reader responses are open.** Please cite a specific hole, a price, or a round you have played.