Lives
Scottsdale, AZ
Handicap
0-4
Age
45-54
Gender
Male
Skill
Advanced
Plays
Once a month

About

Played well as an amateur. Saw some success as a junior. Played a number of mini tours, eons ago. Used the John Daly method before John did. Had less and less success. Became a club professional. Teaching professional. Tournament organizer.

And now just play whenever I can. Have played some of the greatest tracks across the land. And today have a game that looks like I bowled.

One caveat to that: If I can get the driver in play, I can still score. Short game - can get it up and down out of a trash can, still ;)

Review Statistics

Average Rating

4.0
4.0
Total 2 Reviews

Rating Breakdown

2 Reviews
5 Stars
1
4 Stars
0
3 Stars
1
2 Stars
0
1 Stars
0
Recommended Courses
1
Not Recommended Courses
1
Helpful Votes Count
0
Not Helpful Votes Count
0
First Review
10/06/2015
Last Review
10/08/2015

Reviews Map

Reviews

4.0
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I Recommend This Course
5.0
Previously Played
Excellent weather
Used cart

Weiskopf/Moorish Arizona Pine Forest Marvel

Golf Digest, Golf Magazine and Golf Week Magazines have all raved about The Canyon Course at Forest Highlands, often placing it in some variation of a Top 100 Courses (US) rating: Private Clubs, Golf Course Communities, Modern Designs and so on. Locally, the Arizona Republic has often rated it the Number One Private Golf Course in the state. Tom Weiskopf (who designed the course with Jay Morrish) has said "I don't think I have aseen a more natural setting for a golf course." Play it once and you will find yourself in firm agreement with him.

Flagstaff, Arizona is a little over two hours north of Phoenix, straight up US HWY 17. You will also travel about a mile upwards in elevation, placing the Canyon Course, located just a few minutes south of downtown Flagstaff, right at about 7,000 feet. Obviously, at that altitude, the game is played seasonally, with the summer and fall seeing the greatest amount of play. And it is called Canyon for a reason: The terrain IS mountainous and it is encompassed by the largest stand of Ponderosa Pine on the face of the globe. So, beware, there are enormously significant elevation changes throughout the course, which led Messrs. Weiskopf and Morrish to offer up an remarkable routing... 6 par three's, five par five's and seven par four's. In fact, from hole number four to fourteen, every other hole is a three par! Where else have you seen that before?

Conditions Excellent
Value Excellent
Friendliness Excellent
Pace Good
Amenities Excellent
Difficulty Extremely Challenging

Sedona Golf Resort

Played On 08/28/2015
3.0
Previously Played
Excellent weather
Used cart

Sedona's Most Overhyped Golf Course

Sedona Golf Resort was, a long time ago, a spectacular place to play. Not because of the design, nor due to shot values... both of which ARE better than average. Simply put, the incredible views are unlike any other course, anywhere. (Then we got Seven Canyons!) Dramatic elevation changes allow for sight lines that are breathtaking, no doubt. But one comes to a screeching halt when you look at just HOW goofy some on the holes are (beginning with number one)... Much less the routing of par 37 on the front nine and 34 on the back. Then you take into account course conditions, the overworked staff and you have to come to the conclusion that Sedona Golf Resort has seen much better days in the past.

One of the difficulties that you cannot get past lies in the golf course architecture, itself. It's the desert Southwest (this is NO desert course - it's high desert, maybe) and that means, if you play golf, your going to be playing one of the numerous designs by Mr. Gary Panks that exist in Arizona. Nothing personal about him, but his designs are just NOT that great...at all. His two best courses, perhaps, are in Phoenix: The Talon Course at Grayhawk (back when he was paired with newly-inducted Golf Hall of Fame member, David Graham) was the site of the Andersen Consulting World Championship of Golf, the progenitor of the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship. The Raven (formerly The Raven Golf Club at South Mountain) was also designed by the Graham-Panks duo. One of the most unique elements of the course are the 7,000 or so pine trees that line the fairways of the course. Needless to say, in the Sonoran Desert, pine trees are generally not a hazard one has to contend with. But the fall-off from those two courses to the rest of Gary Panks Associates portfolio is precipitous: His designs rarely are intriguing. They are much closer to pedestrian, save for his penchant towards brutal bunkering the likes of which Poe could write about.

Pank's fairway bunkering can just get out of hand, as evidenced by the rework that was done on his Aguila Golf Course in Laveen, a southern suburb of Phoenix. Ostensibly renovated due to deterioration, the fact of the matter was that some of the bunkers were almost unplayable, leading to brutal group mashups on holes nine and eighteen. Say hello to Mr. Five Hour round. As for bunkers protecting greens, they, often times, were even worse (see The Legacy in Phoenix, next door to The Raven): Faces that are horizontally steep, sculpted and scalloped to the point of overkill, with no real entry or exit points. Say Bataan Death march quietly three times and click your spikes together. The same stands true for Sedona Golf Resort.

While trying to maintain the ambiance of the Red Rock experience of Sedona, the sand in the bunkers is a reddish clay based mixture. It is hard to play out of consistently because it is so clumpily inconsistent. Pank's also loves multi-tiered greens, yet he also likes to build them small. That's all fine and good if you have playable lies when you have missed one of the greens but too often that is not the case. While the rest of the course rarely ever suffers from too much water, the surrounds of the greens almost ALWAYS do. So, you're either faced with heavy, thick collars of blue grass rough, OR closely-mown bent grass that is sopping wet and spongy. More than once I've played a shot like an explosion out of a bunker off of those lies than I have trying to nip clean a Phil Phlopper, leaving me to be a sod farmer, instead.

Finally, as the course gets significant tourist play, the marshaling is next to ineffective. Pace of play is often brutally slow. Primarily the player at Sedona Golf Resort is playing it with their camera in hand, their handicap thrown out the side of the cart after the 5th hole and more beverages than are necessary. They're on vacation, don't you know? Getting them to move along isn't part of the gig. Nor is asking them to make sure to repair their ball marks. A few of the greens which receive a brunt of the shots are eternally pockmarked. Certainly that is not an exclusive to Sedona Golf Resort, but I have seen courses invest a few dollars in hiring additional grounds staff to repair them in the early morning or late evening. Not here...

OB Sports has managed the course since 2010, taking over for SunCor Golf when they crashed and burned the previous year. Perhaps that's where the real heat should placed. Not everyone can run a Troon. Nor even a ClubCorp. But one should be able to do better than an American Golf. That's the real puzzler: Orrin Vincent and Ed Francese are two deeply respected men in the game of golf. OB Sports manages some extraordinary properties, too: The Rim Golf Club in Payson, AZ; Monarch Beach Golf Links in Dana Point, CA; Somerby Golf Course in Rochester, MN and Tetherow Golf Club in Bend, OR. It's apparent that OB Sports has an affinity for quality conditions when you look at those golf courses. They have a terrific VP of Agronomy in Like Beardmore. Let's hope they hear more about what it is like to ACTUALLY play Sedona Golf Resort and invest a bit more into the course. The vacationing resort players may not see the difference but the returning players from Phoenix, Tucson, Flagstaff and Las Vegas who make more than just the occasional trek to Sedona might be more inclined to include Sedona Golf Resort in their rota than they do now.

Conditions Fair
Value Fair
Friendliness Fair
Pace Average
Amenities Fair
Difficulty Somewhat Challenging
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Commented on 05/29/2016

Thank you! Finally a real golf review instead of some tourist's stroll through the red rock. I'll save my camera for the hikes and look for a worthy course, even if that means Scottsdale. Appreciate your taking the time to write a worthy evaluation.

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