Phoenix and Scottsdale are stacked with great public-access golf options. Which are best?
Arizona is home to a great selection of desert golf courses, and most of those are centered around Phoenix and Scottsdale. But which are the best?
Thanks to Golfweek’s Best annual rankings of top public-access courses in each state, we can break out the highest-ranked layouts in the Phoenix and Scottsdale area. For the purpose of this exercise, we limited driving time to about an hour from Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. (We used Google Maps for its drive times, keying in the courses on a mid-afternoon – take all drive times around the Valley of the Sun with a grain of salt, of course.)
There are other options not included here, courses that were beyond that hour limit. If you have a little more time for the drive, Wickenburg Ranch’s Big Wick course ranks No. 2 among all public-access courses in the state, but it’s about 90 minutes northwest of the airport. Similar story for several strong options in Tucson about two hours to the southeast.
A little background on how we do this: The hundreds of members of our course-ratings panel continually evaluate courses and rate them on 10 criteria on a points basis of 1 through 10. They also file a single, overall rating on each course. Those overall ratings are averaged to produce all our Golfweek’s Best course rankings.
The courses on this list allow public access in some fashion, be it standard daily green fees, through a resort or by staying at an affiliated hotel. If there’s a will, there’s a tee time – no membership required.
Keep scrolling to see how they stack up, and check out the accompanying map to get a handle on roughly where everything is located.
The Valley of the Sun offers plenty of great public-access golf courses.
Headed to the Phoenix/Scottsdale area for the annual giant party that is the WM Phoenix Open on the PGA Tour? Maybe you scored a ticket to watch the Eagles square off against the Chiefs in Super Bowl 57 at State Farm Stadium in nearby Glendale? Perhaps you’re one of the truly lucky ones planning to attend both?
Then pack your golf clubs because the Valley of the Sun offers plenty of great public-access golf courses. For most of the year, we recommend you start with these top 10 in the area. Of course, only nine are really options for the week of the Super Bowl and WM Phoenix Open, as TPC Scottsdale’s Stadium Course is booked to host the pros, but you get the idea.
Golfweek’s Best ranks courses around the world, utilizing a pool of more than 800 course raters. The most popular rankings list in the program is the Best Courses You Can Play list for public-access layouts in each state. To analyze the top 10 public-access courses around the Phoenix and Scottsdale area, we started with those rankings for all of Arizona. Then we included only those courses within a 90-minute drive of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, which sits about halfway between TPC Scottsdale and State Farm Stadium.
But don’t consider these your only options. Check out even more great courses in Arizona on the state-by-state public-access list. But be ready to pay a premium for a tee time the week of the Super Bowl and PGA Tour event, as many courses in the valley utilize fluctuating on-demand pricing all year, and all the courses will see a spike in demand on what will be the busiest week of the year.
The top public-access offerings in this stacked golf state go on for miles, especially in the Phoenix-Scottsdale region.
Arizona is a gifted golf state, with desert courses of all kinds to suit any budget or taste. Especially in the region of Phoenix and Scottsdale, there are miles and miles of fairways to welcome residents, visitors and seasonal snowbirds alike.
Tops among the public-access offerings is We-Ko-Pa’s Saguaro Course, designed by famed architects Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw and which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. One of two courses at the facility operated by a casino next door, the Saguaro Course ranks No. 1 in Arizona on Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play list for each state.
Golfweek’s Best offers many lists of course rankings, with the list of top public-access courses among the most popular. All the courses on this list allow public access in some fashion, be it standard daily green fees, through a resort or by staying at an affiliated hotel. If there’s a will, there’s a tee time.
Imagine stepping inside a cruise ship, but instead of ocean water, you’re surrounded by the Sonoran Desert.
Imagine stepping inside a cruise ship, but instead of ocean water, you’re surrounded by the Sonoran Desert.
We-Ko-Pa Casino Resort, about 30 miles northeast of central Phoenix on land owned by the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation, is where this vision becomes reality as a reimagined one-stop vacation spot.
People who visited We-Ko-Pa before the pandemic will find a different, higher-end experience today, said Gail Manginelli, a spokeswoman for the resort.
“We have everything right here — fine dining, a casino, golf, outdoor activities and a spa,” she said. “And you feel like you’re away from it all, even though you’re close enough. All you see is desert.”
A reinvention and rebranding
The 166,341-square-foot casino resort, an AAA Four Diamond hotel, reinvented and rebranded itself upon the completion of a new, 100 percent smoke-free casino in October 2020. It replaced the original Fort McDowell Casino.
The resort closed in March 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but reopened in May, not long before its refresh was completed.
Slot machines at the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation’s We-Ko-Pa Casino Resort in Fort McDowell, Arizona. (Photo: Joel Angel Juarez/The Arizona Republic)
The resort is across the street from the We-Ko-Pa Golf Club, which has two award-winning golf courses with desert and mountain views, and close to Fort McDowell Adventures, which hosts outdoor experiences like horseback tours and desert Segway tours.
We-Ko-Pa resort, Fort McDowell Casino are now unified
Before the pandemic, the We-Ko-Pa hotel and Fort McDowell Casino operated as separate entities.
The casino opened in 1984 under the name Ba’Ja Bingo, Manginelli said. It was Arizona’s first casino.
The hotel opened in 2006 as the Radisson Fort McDowell Resort & Casino, then was renamed the We-Ko-Pa Resort & Conference Center in 2014, she said. The hotel has 246 rooms, 25,000 square feet of meeting space, two outdoor pools and a spa.
Unifying the hotel and casino enabled We-Ko-Pa to build “a more cohesive brand” and operate more efficiently, Manginelli said.
An upgraded, smoke-free new casino
Open 24 hours, We-Ko-Pa’s casino boasts more than 900 slot machines, a 400-seat bingo hall, and 16 blackjack tables.
In the last 12 months, the casino introduced new gaming options including new craps and roulette table games and eight sports betting kiosks.
A key difference from the old casino is how the new one opened as a smoke-free venue, said Christi Windle, We-Ko-Pa’s director of sales.
“No one has ever smoked in it,” she said. “With other casinos, even if it’s smoke-free, you can still have lingering smoke (from when smoking was allowed).”
Where to eat at We-Ko-Pa Casino Resort
One of the most prominent additions to We-Ko-Pa since its rebranding is Ember, a fine dining restaurant specializing in steaks and seafood. It has attracted high interest among visitors and received high-profile recognition.
“It really is a freestanding destination,” Windle said. “Some people come just for the restaurant.”
The Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation’s We-Ko-Pa Casino Resort in Fort McDowell, Arizona. (Photo: Joel Angel Juarez/The Arizona Republic)
OpenTable recognized Ember in its 2022 Diner’s Choice awards as one of the 10 Arizona restaurants with the best service.
Ember’s wine selection encompasses 22 countries with 800 wines by the bottle and 26 wines by the glass. These include 32 wines that scored a perfect 100 points on Wine Spectator’s world’s best wine lists.
Wine Spectator recently honored Ember for outstanding wine curation. The resort said on July 25 that Ember received the magazine’s 2022 Best of Award of Excellence.
Ember also received this recognition in 2021.
“That we won this award two years in a row – which also happens to be how long Ember has been open – is a testament to our entire staff’s commitment to excellence,” Zac Gallo, We-Ko-Pa’s executive director of food and beverage, said in a statement.
Ember isn’t the only place to eat at We-Ko-Pa. Other restaurants include:
WKP Sports & Entertainment, which serves pub food and craft beer and hosts live music and sports betting.The Market, a quick-serve restaurant with on-the-go options, open 24 hours a day.
The Dining Studio, with two all-you-can-eat restaurants in one: Las Tapas, which serves Mexican food, and Dragon Wok & Noodle, which serves Asian food.
Ahnala, a breakfast and lunch spot specializing in American comfort food.
What’s next for We-Ko-Pa
The rebranding and enhancements to the guest experience – right down to the Native American design elements in the lobby – were intended to reimagine We-Ko-Pa as a must-visit destination.
And there’s still more to come. The poolside cabanas will be upgraded to “super deluxe,” each with its own TV and refrigerator.
The new cabanas were supposed to debut in May, but supply chain disruptions delayed completion, Windle said.
Occupancy at We-Ko-Pa is up
The result of We-Ko-Pa’s work is an occupancy rate that staff said is “well exceeding” pre-pandemic levels.
“Everybody’s just super excited to come out and have an experience,” Windle said.
Business travel is still overcoming pandemic-era challenges nationwide and in the Phoenix area, but We-Ko-Pa’s business from groups is strong going into 2023.
A view of the pool at the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation’s We-Ko-Pa Casino Resort in Fort McDowell, Arizona. (Photo: Joel Angel Juarez/The Arizona Republic)
Staff attributed this in part to upcoming events like the Super Bowl and the WM Phoenix Open.
“(Travelers are) wanting it to be 2019,” Windle said. “They give me three to four dates and we’re all booked.”
We-Ko-Pa tops the list in Arizona for Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play 2020.
One hole in Arizona vacuums up much of the golf world’s attention each year, that being the par-3 16th on the Stadium Course at TPC Scottsdale. Only 163 yards long, the one-shotter is the scene of the biggest party in golf most years, with thousands of fans camped out in encircling bleachers to watch, cheer and taunt the PGA Tour players in the Waste Management Phoenix Open.
But there is so much more to the golf scene in the Grand Canyon State.
Golfweek ranks courses by compiling the average ratings – on a points basis of 1 to 10 – of its more than 750 raters to create several industry-leading lists of courses. That includes the popular Best Courses You Can Play list for courses that allow non-member tee times. These generally are defined as courses accessible to resort guests or regular daily-fee players.
No. 1 on that list is not the Stadium Course at TPC Scottsdale, but the Saguaro Course at We-Ko-Pa Golf Club in nearby Fort McDowell. Built by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw in 2006 on Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation land near a casino, the Saguaro features all the expected trappings of a great desert course, with a few twists. The course is walkable, a rarity in the Scottsdale area. And Coore and Crenshaw didn’t have to move a lot of dirt during construction, keeping with their naturalistic theme of situating holes on prime ground that doesn’t need much heavy lifting.
We-Ko-Pa is also home to the Cholla Course designed by Scott Miller, which ranks No. 7 in the state on Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play list. The pair make for a can’t-miss destination east of Scottsdale.
The Tortolita nine at Ritz-Carlton Golf Club at Dove Mountain (Courtesy of the Ritz-Carlton)
The No. 2 public-access course in Arizona is the Rees Jones-designed Quintero Golf Club in Peoria, just a short drive north of the greater Phoenix area. Rounding out the top 3 in the state is the combination of the Jack Nicklaus-designed Saguaro and Tortolita nines at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club at Marana near Tucson.
Wickenburg Ranch’s Big Wick, located northwest of Phoenix, is No. 4 in Arizona on the Best Courses You Can Play list, followed the famed Stadium Course at TPC Scottsdale in the No. 5 spot.
Troon North’s Monument course in Arizona (Courtesy of Troon North)
The list of great public-access courses in Arizona, especially around the Phoenix-Scottsdale area, hardly stops there. Ak-Chin Southern Dunes is No. 6 and definitely worth a round, followed by the prementioned Cholla Course at We-Ko-Pa, Troon North’s Monument Course, Ventana Canyon and Troon North’s Pinnacle Course. It’s not an exaggeration to say the great holes continue to stretch on for miles and miles, huge ribbons of green set against the desert backdrop.
If you’re looking for a great municipal course, definitely check out Papago in Phoenix. Designed by Billy Bell and opened in 1963, Papago is No. 22 on the Best Courses You Can Play list and is home to the Arizona State University golf teams – their incredible practice facility is among the best in the country. And the gastro pub-style restaurant at Papago is a perfect example of how a 19th hole can go well beyond the typical golf fare of hot dogs and prepackaged sandwiches.
Altogether, the public-access golf scene in Arizona is one of the best in the country. Check out all the rankings below.
Each year, we publish the three lists that are the foundation of our course-ratings program: Golfweek’s Best 2020: Top 200 Classic Courses, Golfweek’s Best 2020: Top 200 Modern Courses and Golfweek’s Best 2020: Best Courses You Can Play.
These are the best courses you can play in Arizona
We-Ko-Pa (Saguaro), Fort McDowell (No. 199 m)
Quintero, Peoria (m)
Ritz Carlton Golf Club at Dove Mountain (Saguaro/Tortolita), Marana (m)
The members of our course-ratings panel continually evaluate courses and rate them based on our 10 criteria. They also file a single, overall rating on each course. Those overall ratings on each course are averaged together to produce a final rating for each course. Then each course is ranked against other courses in its state, or nationally, to produce the final rankings.
What’s better than spring training baseball? How about a little golf on top courses before catching a game in the Cactus or Grapefruit leagues? Both Arizona and Florida, the annual homes to Major League Baseball’s spring training, are full of great …
What’s better than spring training baseball? How about a little golf on top courses before catching a game in the Cactus or Grapefruit leagues? Both Arizona and Florida, the annual homes to Major League Baseball’s spring training, are full of great courses.
Arizona might have an upper hand, as so many of the state’s top courses are clustered near the Phoenix area, the hub of spring training there. It’s entirely possible to play a quick, early-morning round, then catch a game in the afternoon.
The baseball is more spread out in Florida, with games stretching from the Tampa area, down the southwest coast and all the way across to the Atlantic coast. Some of the best golf, such as TPC Sawgrass, isn’t very close to spring training, but for fans driving south to catch a few games, there is plenty of great golf along the way.
Yankees pitcher Luis Severino throws a bullpen session during spring training at George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, Florida. (Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports)
Check out the top-ranked courses in each state to see where golf might best mix with any baseball plans. The members of our course-ratings panel continually evaluate courses and rate them based on our 10 criteria. They also file a single, overall rating on each course. Those overall ratings on each course are averaged to produce a final rating for each course. Then each course is ranked against other courses in its state to produce the final rankings.
