# The Best Golf Courses in Prescott

Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-prescott-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

Prescott is the mountain town Arizonans retire to on purpose: a courthouse square, pine forests, air a full season cooler than Phoenix, ninety minutes and several thousand feet away from the desert floor. Its golf tells the same story. The best of it is private and tucked into the pines and granite. The most democratic of it is a city-owned 36 that has served everybody else for decades. Both halves belong in an honest ranking.

We score the golf first, then the day, then access and value, and Prescott is the rare town where those criteria produce two different No. 1s depending on who is asking. We will give you one order, but we will show our work, because the argument between the private clubs and the muni is the actual subject here.

## 1Talking Rock Golf Club

Talking Rock is Jay Morrish on a working ranch, and that phrase does real work. Morrish built golf that respects big land: the course moves through open ranch country in the pines northwest of town, holes spread across ground that still feels like a ranch rather than a subdivision wearing one as a costume. It is private, it is quiet, and the golf has the spacious, unhurried quality that comes from an architect who trusted the property.

The concession is twofold. It sits well outside Prescott proper, and it is members' golf, so for most readers this is a description of a course they will experience the way they experience most great private clubs, from outside the fence. Even so, it is the best golf in the Prescott area: the strongest land, the strongest design hand, the round members of the other clubs mention with respect.

## 2Capital Canyon Club

Capital Canyon is the private club in the pines closer to town, high-country golf where the trees tighten the questions and the elevation does quiet work on your distances all day. Where Talking Rock is open and ranch-like, Capital Canyon is enclosed and mountain-like, and which one a golfer prefers says a lot about the golfer.

We put it second on the strength of the land at Talking Rock rather than any failing here. On conditioning and day-to-day member life it gives nothing away. It is also, like No. 1, closed to the public, which is why the next course on this list matters out of proportion to its architecture.

## 3Antelope Hills Golf Course

Antelope Hills is a city-owned 36 with a Gary Panks north course, and it is the backbone of Prescott golf for everyone who does not belong to a club. Thirty-six holes of municipal golf in a town this size is a civic commitment, and Panks gave the north course enough shape and variety that locals treat the two sides as genuinely different rounds rather than a first and second string.

Is it the equal of the private courses above it? No, and it does not charge like it is. Ranked on value and access alone it would top this list walking away. Ranked on the golf first, it lands third, and honestly: for a visiting golfer without connections in Prescott, Antelope Hills is not the consolation prize. It is the trip.

## 4StoneRidge Golf Course

StoneRidge is the community course in Prescott Valley, elevation changes and mountain views on the east side of the area, built for the development around it and priced for regular play. It asks a few more questions than a typical community layout and the ground gives it drama the flatter neighborhood courses in this series would envy.

Fourth, because the three above it each do something it cannot match: better land, better design pedigree, or thirty-six holes of public value. It remains a perfectly good reason to live where its members live.

Granite, pines, thin cool air, and a courthouse square waiting with dinner after the round. Prescott golf is Arizona's mountain argument, and it wins it more often than the desert towns like to admit.

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