Alright, as promised (and requested too!) here's my weekend in AZ.
General comments: we stayed in Scottsdale, very close to Cactus & 56th. So while I haven't Google Map'd all the courses we played, I think we were around that vicinity between 15-30 minutes away for each course.
Thanks to the above posters for the recommendations. Probably a bit tardy on asking on my part as a fellow golfer did the booking so I couldn't take the suggestions of Quintero et al. into account. Looking at where Quintero is though, unless there's another course nearby, it might not have realistically fit into our itinerary.
I tried to grab some pictures but I am definitely one that forgets about such things and before I know it the round is over. Our itinerary was:
Saturday: Desert Canyon, Eagle Mountain
Sunday: Dove Valley, Legend Trail
Monday: Lookout Mountain
I played until mid September, my last round was October (Canadian Thanksgiving) and it showed, my body wasn't ready for this much golf after a couple months off. On Sunday my hands were beginning to blister early in the morning round, and my scores definitely showed it. Anyways here are some pictures and my rounds.
Desert Canyon
6,155 yards (blues) - 68.4/118
Scorecard
#1 tee, elevated tee dogleg left, 364 yards. Hit one way left of the water even, made a great up and down for par.
#4 tee, dogleg left par 5, 484 yards. Great drive here but my approach 3h went way left and settled for a bogey.
#10 tee, short par 4. Our whole group made a mess of this one and it was not a hard hole. I thought this course had a lot of nice scenery in the background.
#16 tee, downhill 152 yard par 3. Dunked one way short of the green, d'oh.
DC was a nice start. I wouldn't say overly challenging or punishing, some tricky spots where I certainly would have made different club selection off the tee but that's a given on a first go round. Good condition.
Eagle Mountain
6,269 yards (greens) - 69.1/127
Scorecard
#10 green, long par 5.
#18 tee, downhill par 4. Great view, already getting very dark by 5pm.
There were a few standout holes that were tough (#2 from the back tees was not easy) but overall there was a lot of room to miss at Eagle Mountain. Sadly I'd probably say I remember the least about this round, maybe the design wasn't very memorable for me. But it was a lot of golf in a short period. Good condition.
Dove Valley
6,475 yards (golds) - 70.2/124
Scorecard
I forget which hole this was on, but maybe 75 yards in front of the tee, some of the cactuses had been getting peppered by birds and golf balls it seems. I got a big kick out of it, this being my first time in Arizona.
I liked the layout of Dove Valley. Condition was fairly barren, apparently someone had put too much of a chemical in the water and it had really killed the course. Greens were easily the quickest we played all weekend. I can see why some people might say this is a dog track though, was not worth taking the camera out.
Legend Trail
6,400 yards (silvers) - 69.3/130
Scorecard
I didn't take any pictures here, probably a combination of my poor play due to my hands being ripped apart and being sour about the Ravens tossing away a game. But this was a beautifully kept course. Would probably call it the best that we played, unfortunately my worst round of the weekend.
Lookout Mountain
5,990 yards (whites) - 67.3/123
Scorecard
#1, simple par 4.
#10, par 4.
Took it easy on ourselves by playing the whites, and despite my struggles on Sunday, I rebound and shot a 39 on the front. First sub-40 nine ever! Woohoo! Naturally I blew up with a 51 on the back for a cool 90, lol. But it was a fun round and good way to finish. Groomed pretty well and definitely the wettest course we played, but it's not really wet when you compare it to the Pacific NW.
All in all, great first experience. I was just happy to be playing at this time of year and wasn't going to be upset by the quality, even Dove Valley in the condition it was in is better than 75% of the courses up here. Enjoyed the scenery and all the people we played with were great. Would like to go back and give some other courses a try, particularly when my game isn't in offseason mode. Putted pretty well overall and did not really have any experiences with inconsistent greens. They rolled similarly for each course and I liked that a lot. Greens are probably the worst part about golf in Canada, so many courses up here are garbage compared to these and some of you locals will probably say we didn't really play any upper tier courses.
Thanks for reading.
Last edited by g-bebe; 12-03-2014 at 02:11 AM.