What it is
Papago is the municipal course that got good. The City of Phoenix opened it in 1963 on the flats of Papago Park below the red buttes, to a design by William F. Bell, the Southern California architect whose Torrey Pines was already famous, and for its first decades it was what a good city course should be: wide, treed, affordable, and strong enough to host the 1971 U.S. Amateur Public Links and years of Phoenix Open qualifying. Then it was neglected into the 2000s, as municipal courses are, until a partnership between the city and the Arizona Golf Association’s foundation funded a $5.8 million restoration led by Billy Fuller, a former Augusta National superintendent. The course reopened on December 6, 2008, as a 7,333-yard par 72 with new greens and irrigation and Bell’s shapes brought back.
The second act came in 2018, when the Lou Grubb Clubhouse opened, a mid-century-modern building with Lou’s Bar and Grill, a patio facing the buttes and Evie’s Pavilion for events, and Arizona State’s men’s and women’s golf teams moved in as the course’s home program. A four-month renovation in 2022 rebuilt every bunker, moved the ninth and eighteenth greens and the first and tenth tees, and took out more than ten acres of turf to save water, with the course kept open the whole time. Troon manages it for the city.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Because Scottsdale’s public golf is either resort-priced or unremarkable, and our golf without a membership note spends a paragraph saying so. Papago is thirteen minutes from Old Town, charges municipal rates, and is a real golf course with a view of Camelback from most of the back nine. It is also parkland, which is a relief if you have had a week of desert golf and lost a dozen balls in the cactus.
The practical version
Thirteen minutes from Old Town by Scottsdale Road and McDowell. Tee times online; twilight is the bargain. Walkable, which almost nothing in the Valley is. Closed for a few weeks each fall for overseeding. Lunch or a beer at Lou’s afterward.
When to go
November through March is the season, after the overseed has come in and before the heat, and it is also when the course is busiest and the rate is highest for a municipal. Weekday mornings after the ASU players clear the range, around nine, are the sweet spot; Friday and weekend mornings book out days ahead.
Twilight in winter is the local’s play: the rate drops, the course empties, and the last nine holes are played with the buttes and Camelback turning red behind the greens. The back nine faces the right way for it.
Summer is early tee times and discounted rates, as everywhere, and Papago’s trees give it more shade than any desert course. The fall overseeding closure, usually in October, is the one time to check before you book.
The course
Bell built big greens and generous fairways, and Fuller’s restoration kept them, so this is a course where you can hit driver. The buttes sit over the front nine and Camelback over the back; the ninth and eighteenth, with their relocated greens, finish toward the clubhouse and the patio. The 2022 bunkers are deep and well shaped and the turf reduction has put desert back along the edges of several holes without making them penal. The range is where ASU practices and is excellent.
Lou’s and the clubhouse
Lou’s Bar and Grill, in the 2018 clubhouse, is a proper golf-club bar: burgers, a long beer list, a patio with the buttes in front of it, and a crowd of regulars who have been playing Papago since the 1980s and will tell you about the decline and the comeback. It is a reasonable lunch for people who do not play, and a better sunset drink than most of the resort bars that charge for the view.
The story
Phoenix built Papago in 1963 at the height of the city’s postwar confidence, hiring Bell, whose father had designed courses across California and who had just finished Torrey Pines, to lay out a championship-length municipal on the flat land south of the buttes. For twenty years it was among the best public courses in the Southwest; the U.S. Golf Association brought the Amateur Public Links here in 1971, and the Phoenix Open ran its Monday qualifiers on it for years. Then the city’s golf budget went the way of most city golf budgets, the greens shrank, the irrigation failed in patches and the course that had been Phoenix’s pride became its embarrassment.
The rescue came from the golf establishment rather than the city. The Arizona Golf Association and its nonprofit foundation proposed to take over the course under a long-term agreement, fund the restoration and run it as the state’s home for amateur golf. The Golf Guys, a local management firm, oversaw the six-month, $5.8 million project with Billy Fuller as architect, and when it reopened in December 2008 the reviews said the obvious: Bell’s course was back, with better greens. The 2018 clubhouse, named for the Phoenix car dealer and philanthropist Lou Grubb, and the arrival of ASU’s teams completed the turn; Troon took on the management, and the 2022 renovation addressed the two things left, the bunkers and the water.
The Scottsdale connection
Scottsdale is the golf capital of the Valley and has almost no good public golf of its own at a public price; the city’s courses are decent, the resort courses are superb and expensive, and Troon’s name is on half of them. Papago, thirteen minutes away, is the course Scottsdale golfers who live here actually play on a Tuesday. The ASU connection matters more than it seems: the Sun Devils have produced a long line of touring pros, and the players you see on the range in the morning are a reason the practice facilities are as good as they are.
Getting there
Scottsdale Road south to McDowell Road, right (west) on McDowell for half a mile, then left on 52nd Street into Papago Park and follow Moreland Street to the clubhouse under the buttes. About thirteen minutes from Old Town. From the Camelback corridor, 56th Street south to McDowell. The course sits in the park’s southwest corner, a few minutes from Hole-in-the-Rock, and the Botanical Garden and the zoo are on the other side of Galvin Parkway.