The family club at the foot of the McDowells
Ancala is east Scottsdale’s private club: a guard-gated community of about 850 acres on Via Linda, east of the Shea corridor and Scottsdale Ranch, backed up against the foothills of the McDowells, with Ancala Country Club at its center at 11700 E Via Linda.
The course is a Perry Dye design, par 72 and 6,815 yards from the back, with five tee options. It is desert-style, with strategic bunkers, elevation changes and views across the Valley toward Camelback, a course the club pitches on “Dye drama” rather than length. Around it are tennis and pickleball, a resort-style pool, a renovated fitness center, youth programs, and the Overlook Kitchen and Bar with views over the course.
The club dates itself to 1989, when developer Rich Barton conceived a private club at the heart of an upscale community, and to its opening in 1990. Today Arcis Golf owns it, which links it to Arcis’s public courses nearby and its national network.
It is private. You play with a member. But Ancala is also the friendliest-priced name on Scottsdale’s private-club list, and the desert just beyond its gate is public.
Membership, guests and what a visitor can do
Membership tiers are golf, sports and social (the club calls the latter lifestyle), plus a young-professional golf category. Golf includes unlimited play on the Dye course and the practice complex, with the fitness center, pool, dining and events. Sports gives full tennis, pool and dining, and golf with cart fees from May through September, plus twice a month in season. Social covers dining, events and hosting private functions at member prices.
What it costs. The club asks prospects to contact its sales director. A real-estate team’s 2021 guide listed:
- Full golf: $7,000 initiation deposit, $1,000 annual food and beverage minimum
- Young professional golf: $7,000 deposit, $415 a month
- Sports: $2,500, $450 a month
- Social: $500, $75 a month, $500 food and beverage minimum
Those figures are five years old and will have changed; they are still a useful sense of scale next to the six-figure initiations at clubs farther north. Membership adds Arcis Access benefits across the Arcis portfolio and, by the club’s account, the TPC Network and partner properties worldwide.
Guests play with a member and pay guest fees. The club hosts weddings, member events and tournaments and outings.
For visitors, the public side is close. The Lost Dog Wash trailhead on 124th Street, north of Via Linda, leads into the McDowell Sonoran Preserve; our Lost Dog Wash entry explains the name. Over Easy does breakfast in Ancala Village on Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard, and the Mercado at Scottsdale Ranch is a few minutes west on Via Linda.
A 1990 club in the eastern foothills
Ancala belongs to the generation of Scottsdale golf communities that followed the city east along Shea and Via Linda as well as north. Rich Barton began it in 1989, and the club opened in 1990 as a full-service family club rather than a pure golf retreat, which is still how it sells itself: golf, tennis, swimming and a dining room where members gather after the round. Real-estate listings sometimes give 1991 for the course; the club’s own history says 1990. The community around it grew to 542 custom homesites and 42 casita homes, mostly 3,000 to 6,000 square feet, many on golf or hillside lots.
Perry Dye, of the Dye family of architects, gave the course its shape: strategic bunkers, elevation changes and long views across the Valley, and five sets of tees so the same holes work for every member. The club has since put a multimillion-dollar renovation into its clubhouse, with new furnishings and dining spaces, an improved fitness center and a new outdoor patio.
Ownership by Arcis Golf ties Ancala into a portfolio that, in Scottsdale, also includes the public McDowell Mountain Golf Club, the former Sanctuary, and the Continental executive course, so an Ancala member has public-course options on the same card. For a member-owned comparison, the Country Club at DC Ranch is twenty minutes north. And for the courses you can play without joining anything, see golf without a membership.