The forgiving one
Desert Mountain has a course for every mood, and Apache is the one for a relaxed day. Jack Nicklaus built it in 1996, seven years after the first three, on gentler ground east of Cochise, and the club describes it as designed “to appeal to golfers with traditional sensibilities.” In practice that means rolling fairways, large greens with room around them, and something no other full-length course at the club can claim: no forced carries.
That does not make it short. At 7,211 yards, par 72 from the back, with real elevation changes, it still asks for length. What distinguishes it from the other six is the margin for error. Geronimo and Chiricahua punish a miss with a lost ball; Apache usually gives you a chip.
It is private, so you play it as a member’s guest, and the club’s own notes call it one of its walkable courses.
How it plays
The fairways are moderate and rolling and the greens big, and the areas around them are more forgiving than at the club’s harder courses. The trick is distance: the club’s own notes warn that several holes play longer or shorter than they appear, so the yardage, not the eye, should pick the club. The signature holes, by the club’s count, are 3, 15, 16 and 18. We have not found a published hole-by-hole description beyond that, so ask your host which of the four they fear.
The clubhouse
The Apache Clubhouse opened in 2000, built in a mix of traditional adobe fort and Grand Canyon lodge, and doubles as a gallery for a collection of Native American art. It has a golf boutique, a steak-and-seafood restaurant and a piano bar with live music at night, which makes it the clubhouse members use for dinner as much as for golf.
For a dinner anyone can book, the nearest tables outside the gate are Dynamite Grille at Troon North and Talavera at the Four Seasons.
Where it fits
Apache arrived in 1996, the first new course at Desert Mountain in seven years, and it marks the turn in the club’s building program from showpieces to range. Renegade, Cochise and Geronimo had been built in three years to launch the community and put it on television; Apache, Chiricahua and Outlaw were spread over the next seven years as the villages filled in, and each gave the membership something the others did not. Apache’s contribution was a full-length Nicklaus course that a high handicapper could enjoy.
The record on it is thin. The club publishes its yardage, par, signature holes and a description; it has hosted no tour event that we found, and its history is the club’s history. That is a fair summary of the course itself: the one nobody writes about, and quite possibly the one a guest enjoys most.