Town Rankings / Arizona

The Best Golf Courses in Scottsdale

Late January in Scottsdale, and the loudest hole in golf is doing its thing: a par 3 wrapped in grandstands, tens of thousands of people who came as much for the party as the golf, noise rolling across the desert. Fifteen minutes up the road, the same morning is silent, saguaros and granite, a course with no gallery at all that most serious players would rather be playing. Scottsdale contains both of those mornings, plus a hundred variations between them. It is the deepest golf town in Arizona and it is not a close call.

Seven courses make this list and honest arguments could add seven more. We score the golf first, then the day, then access and value. That order does something unfashionable here: it drops the most famous course in town to third. Read the reasoning before you object. Objections are welcome. They are also, in this case, wrong.

1Troon North Golf Club Pinnacle Course

Troon North up the road is the better golf argument, and Pinnacle is its sharper half. This is high desert golf at its most dramatic: holes threaded between granite boulders and saguaro stands, Pinnacle Peak standing over the property, carries and angles that have to be thought through rather than merely swung at. It asks the full set of questions over 18 holes and it conditions its answers beautifully.

The concession: it is resort-priced, it can be severe on a windy day, and the housing around parts of Troon North reminds you that Scottsdale sells this view by the lot. None of that dents the central fact. If one public round in Scottsdale has to stand for the whole town's golf, this is the round.

2Troon North Golf Club Monument Course

Monument is the original Troon North course, named for the boulder formations its holes play around, and the gap between it and Pinnacle is the smallest gap between first and second anywhere in this series. It is a touch more forgiving, a touch more open in feel, and some golfers honestly prefer it.

So why is Pinnacle first? Ceiling. Monument gives you a great round; Pinnacle gives you a great round with more holes that can go spectacularly wrong, and a ranking that rewards the golf first has to pay for that difference.

3TPC Scottsdale Stadium Course

Here it is, third, and here is the case. The Stadium Course in late January is a stadium with a golf hole in it, the most famous scene in regular tour golf, and playing the 16th with the grandstands up is an experience no other course on this list sells. The rest of the course is good tour golf: wide, strategic in a modern way, built to produce birdies and noise in equal measure.

And for eleven months of the year, with the stands down, it is a very good course in a flat piece of desert, charging famous-course prices for a round that Troon North beats on land, on drama, and on the quality of its hardest holes. The concession runs the other way too: if your one Scottsdale trip falls in tournament season, move this to the top of your personal list and do not think twice. Fame earned in public counts. It just does not outrank better golf.

4Grayhawk Golf Club Raptor Course

Grayhawk's Raptor is the tournament player's course in Scottsdale, a strong, modern test that has hosted big amateur and professional fields and plays like it: length, angles, greens that defend themselves. The setting is a half-step below Troon North's drama, the challenge a half-step above almost everything else in town.

Fourth here is a function of the company. In Phoenix, in Mesa, in most American golf towns, Raptor is the headline. In Scottsdale it is the best course most visitors have never heard of, which might be the single most Scottsdale sentence in this entire ranking.

5Grayhawk Golf Club Talon Course

Talon is Raptor's sibling and the friendlier day of the two, desert golf with the edges softened, still scenic, still serious, but built to send a resort foursome home happy rather than audited. The knock is that Talon can feel like the warm-up act at its own address. The defense is that warm-up acts at Grayhawk would headline in most zip codes.

6TPC Scottsdale Champions Course

The Champions Course is the locals' TPC, across the way from the Stadium, a strong desert layout at a fraction of the famous course's price and with a fraction of its traffic. Golfers who live in Scottsdale will tell you, quietly, that the value pick in the TPC family is this one, and they are not wrong.

Sixth is about ceiling again: Champions was built as the accessible alternative and it plays like a very good one. But if this ranking counted dollars, it would climb three spots, and readers booking on a budget should perform that adjustment themselves.

7Boulders Resort Golf Club

The Boulders closes the list with the most distinctive setting of any of them, golf routed around ancient granite formations that look arranged by a set designer, up against the far north edge of Scottsdale where the desert is least disturbed. The golf splits into two courses at a resort that has sold this landscape for decades, and the landscape is the headline.

Why last among seven good courses? The golf itself, hole for hole, is a step behind the six above it, more scenery than examination. But understand what seventh means in Scottsdale: it means a course people fly across the country to play, ranked last in its own town.

That is the depth problem in one line. Seven courses, any of them a trip's centerpiece somewhere else, and the argument is only about the order. Scottsdale wins Arizona. It is not close, and on the evidence above, it should not be.