Arizona Golf Resort is located in Mesa, right across Power Road from Leisure World. It was designed by Arthur Jack Snyder and opened in 1960. Snyder is credited by the American Society of Golf Course Architects with 47 original designs including Ken McDonald in Tempe and Legend Trail in Scottsdale.
This is a resort golf course. There aren’t a lot of hazards on the course – water comes in play on just three holes – but there are homes lining both sides of every fairway. If you blast your tee shots (and sometimes even your approach shots) way right or way left, you may be able to find it, but there’s also a good chance you won’t be able to hit it again because you’ll be standing in someone’s yard.
If you go online to the Arizona G0lf Resort web site, you’ll read that the resort places a premium on exceptional golf and calls it a “tradition.” Tradition is just a fancy word for old. But what you will find is a lot of mature vegetation and fairways lined with massive cottonwood and eucalyptus trees. Listen for the parakeets. Flocks of the bright green birds make their homes in these trees.
Arizona Golf Resort plays 6,542 yards from the Blue Tees to a Par of 71, a course rating of 70.8, and a slope of 120. On the day we played it, it was very windy, and that made the course play closer to 7,000 yards. Here are some of the highlights of the round:
Holes Worth Writing Home About
Arizona Golf Resort can best be characterized by its long Par 3s and its imminently reachable Par 5s. My favorite hole on the front nine was the 7th hole. I started taking pictures of it when I walked off the 6th green. Then I got to the tee box. It’s another reachable Par 5 at just 488 yards. However, the tee shot from the back tees will mess with your mind if you let it. There’s a hedge on the right side of the tee box, and there are homes you have to carry on the left. It’s really narrow! The hole is a dogleg left, and the ideal tee shot is a draw. But if you’re real aggressive, you can hit your tee shot over all the trees and really shorten the hole. I hit what I would say was an average tee shot and had just 226 yards in. I hit a hybrid.
Arizona Golf Resort’s signature hole is the Par 3 14th. On this day, the tees were placed to the left of the pond, and at just 146 yards, was significantly easier than it usually plays even though we still had to hit it over the water. Typically, from the back tees the player is forced to hit a 175-yard shot through cottonwood trees and over water to the green. It is a very pretty hole and a lot of fun to play.
This is a great golf course if you like to walk. It’s very flat, and other than having to cross a street or two, the distance from one hole to the next is relatively short. But just because the course is flat doesn’t mean it doesn’t have it’s challenges. There’s not a lot of elevation change, which causes distances to appear a lot closer than they actually are. If you have a range finder or another distance measuring device, bring it with you. You’ll see what I mean, and you’ll be glad you have it.
Quiet Please…
I give Arizona Golf Resort a lot of credit. We played the course just eight days after it had re-opened after overseeding, and unlike most courses in the Valley, we were already allowed to drive the golf carts out onto the course! I applaud the course for saying “to heck” with cart path only. It made for a much more enjoyable round.
Just off the 9th tee box sits “Ponderosa II.” If the name of the home sounds familiar, it should. The house was constructed in 1963 as a residence for Lorne Greene, the Canadian actor who portrayed patriarch Ben Cartwright in the 60s television series ‘Bonanza.’ The original ponderosa ranch house was built at Paramount Studios, but the exterior of “Ponderosa II,” as it was named by Greene, closely resembles the original set. In fact, the main room is a replica of the set’s interior. The home was dedicated by fans of ‘Bonanza,’ the 60s most popular television series, in February of this year. It was declared an Historical Landmark by the City of Mesa in 2014.
The golf carts were in great shape. You can tell this resort takes great pride in caring for its fleet. As we were making the turn, the outside service guys were hard at work pressure-washing the carts. This may seem like a minor detail, but I think we’ve all played at courses with run-down carts that haven’t been cared for.
The only negative I could find about Arizona Golf Resort was that several of the bunkers were in really bad shape. Because it’s so hot and dry in Arizona, this is a very common occurrence. The rest of the course is in great shape.
Fore!
I birdied all three of the Par 5s on the back nine, and hit a couple of those greens in two. But my best shot of the round came on the final hole. I was left with a 30-yard pitch shot after failing to reach the green in two, and I knocked it to within five feet for a relatively easy birdie. Had it not been for the wind, this could have been a low round. With the wind, the course was playing closer to 7,000 yards than to 6,500.
While We’re Young
Other than a near-snafu that happened on the first tee, in which a threesome attempted to tee off some 40 minutes before their scheduled time, we got off without a hitch and played in under four hours. While I was snapping photos of the “Bonanza” house later in the round, we let that threesome – and one other – play through.