# The Best Golf Courses in Tucson Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-tucson-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 The 10th hole on the Mountain Course at Ventana Canyon plays through a notch in the canyon, rock on both sides, the kind of tee shot that makes a cart path feel like a tightrope. That hole explains Tucson golf better than any chamber brochure could. This is desert golf with the mountains actually in play, saguaros standing around like indifferent spectators, and late light that turns the whole valley copper. Tucson is not Scottsdale and does not want to be. The bench is shorter, the prices are generally kinder, and the best courses here lean on terrain instead of spectacle. We score the golf first, then the day, then what it costs you to get on. That order rewards the two Ventana courses differently than most visitors expect, and it gives a casino course south of town a hearing it has earned. ## 1Ventana Canyon Golf and Racquet Club Mountain Course The Mountain Course is the one round in Tucson that players describe hole by hole on the drive home. The 10th through the canyon notch is the signature, but the routing keeps returning to rock, elevation, and angles that punish the lazy line. Desert target golf can go wrong in lazy hands, all forced carries and lost balls. Here the targets are fair and the trouble is honest. You can see most of what is going to beat you. The concession is access and price. This is resort golf at the top of the local market, and a first time visitor paying peak rates may wonder whether any desert course justifies the tariff. One stays with it: by the back nine, with the Catalinas filling the horizon and the course climbing into the foothills, the question answers itself. ## 2Sewailo Golf Club Sewailo sits at Casino Del Sol, south of the city, and it was designed by Notah Begay and Ty Butler. That pairing matters. Begay played tour golf at the highest level and Butler knows desert construction, and the result is a course that thinks like a player rather than a postcard. Water appears where desert courses usually fake it, the fairways have room, and the greens ask for the right section rather than merely the right club. Why not first? Ventana's land is better, full stop. Sewailo is manufactured ground and occasionally shows it, long and open in places where the Mountain Course is intimate and strange. But as a pure examination it runs the leader close, and it may be the best value at the top of this list. ## 3Tucson National Golf Club Catalina Course The Catalina Course carried professional tournament golf in Tucson for years, and it still plays like a course built for scoring runs and Sunday pressure. It is the traditionalist's pick here: parkland touches in the desert, mature trees, water in play, a layout that asks for shaped shots instead of target hops from tee to island. The honest knock is that time has softened it. Modern equipment has shrunk its defenses, and stretches of the round feel pleasant rather than demanding. Plenty of golfers will take pleasant. A ranking that pays for difficulty and distinctiveness cannot put it higher than third. ## 4La Paloma Country Club La Paloma is the private entry, ridgeline golf in the foothills with the valley spread out below and a membership that does not need the course to prove anything to visitors. The golf is good, scenic, kept to a high standard, and the setting does a lot of quiet work. It lands fourth because the golf itself, hole for hole, is a half step behind the three public facing courses above it, and because access is a wall rather than a price. If you have the invitation, take it without hesitation. Just do not expect it to rearrange this order. ## 5Ventana Canyon Canyon Course The Canyon Course has the misfortune of sharing an address with the Mountain Course, which makes it the most undervalued round in Tucson and still, fairly, fifth here. It plays the lower ground, friendlier carries, more resort rhythm, and it sends people home happier than its sibling does. That is its job and it does it well. The concession nearly writes the verdict: golfers choosing one Ventana round should choose the Mountain. Golfers with two days should play both and will understand the gap precisely, because it is measured in drama per hole. Five courses, two of them at one club, one at a casino, one old tournament venue, one private ridge. Tucson's list is not deep. Its top is real, though, and the drive out at dusk, mountains going dark purple over the valley, is worth the trip by itself. **Reader responses are open.** Please cite a specific hole, a price, or a round you have played.