The short course
For thirty years Desert Mountain was six Jack Nicklaus courses and nothing smaller. In April 2019 the members added Seven: eighteen par 3s, par 54, 3,114 yards, laid out near the club’s Cave Creek Road edge with a clubhouse and a village of homes around it. The club also calls it No. 7.
It was not a Nicklaus design. Two members built it, Bill Brownlee, a real estate developer, and Wendell Pickett, a landscape architect, who had already made a short course of their own. That is why “seven Nicklaus courses,” a phrase you will see in listings, is one too many.
What distinguishes Seven from the other six is time. A round takes about two hours and 45 minutes, the holes run from wedges to one of about 250 yards, and the clubhouse beside the 18th is built for staying. It is private: members, holders of the club’s Seven Golf membership and their guests.
How it plays
Short does not mean simple. Seven is USGA rated and built as a championship par-3 course: false fronts, rolling greens and quick downhill putts if you go long. The club’s advice is to keep the approach below the pin, and to bring a real ground game or a high, soft shot. From the back tees on the 6th and 10th you may need a driver or a 3-wood. On the 14th, the front tees tempt some golfers to putt from the tee box. The signature holes, by the club’s count, are 9, 15 and 17.
Two quirks. The sandy tees are bunkers set 60 to 200-plus yards from the green that you can play from instead of a tee, practice for the long bunker shot nobody practices. And a man-made stream runs through five holes, by GolfPass’s account at the opening, with a lighted putting course connected to the 18th green. The club also uses its own handicap system for match play on the course.
The clubhouse
The Seven Clubhouse, at 37102 N Cave Creek Rd, is the most modern building at the club and the most social: a gastropub with live entertainment, comfort food and craft beer, two bocce courts, fire features and heated patio floors. It won a 2019 Platinum award in the National Association of Home Builders’ Best in American Living Awards.
Why a par-54 course
Seven was the first course the members built after they took over the club in 2011, and it was a bet on a different kind of member. GolfPass, reporting the opening in April 2019, called it one of only two private par-54 layouts in America and tied it to a membership push: the club had added 131 members the year before, a gain of nearly 15 percent. Seven came with a village of up to 190 homes on about 90 acres, sold with a Desert Mountain membership, and with its own Seven Golf category for buyers who wanted the short course and the social life without a full golf membership.
The course opened the same spring a renovated Renegade reopened, and it has since become the club’s evening room. By 2021 the club was selling homes in the village with a choice of Full Golf, Lifestyle or Seven Golf membership and no waitlist, which in a club with a waitlist for full golf is the real point.