The view over the mountain
Eagle Mountain is the round you play for the view. It sits just over the south end of the McDowell Mountains in Fountain Hills, about 25 minutes from Old Town by Shea Boulevard, and it looks back the way you came: across the Valley to Camelback and Red Mountain, with the city spread out between.
It is one public course, par 71, opened in 1996 and designed by Scott Miller, the Scottsdale architect who also built Kierland and We-Ko-Pa’s Cholla. It plays from 5,065 to about 6,800 yards across four tees, through natural box canyons, rolling hills and desert valleys, with elevation drops the Inn at Eagle Mountain’s guide puts at up to 300 feet. The club calls it a departure from target golf, and it is: there is more room than the drama suggests, and it is fair to a mid-handicapper.
The honest pitch: Eagle Mountain doesn’t have a tour history or a famous hole, but few courses in the area are more pleasant to spend four hours on, and it comes with its own small inn on the 18th fairway.
Booking it, and what it costs
Tee times can be booked up to 90 days ahead, online, in person or at the golf shop, 480-816-1234. The club is owned and operated by Troon Golf, and it guarantees its best rate for booking direct.
The price isn’t published as a rate card; the online booking shows the rate for each time. Tax and a water resource fee are added to green fees. A bag of about 90 range balls is $25. Troon Access members get Troon’s usual discounts here.
Twilight. Afternoon rates are lower here as everywhere; with the course looking out over the Valley at sunset, it is one of the better places in the Valley to use them. Our tee time and twilight entry explains the general pattern.
Stay-and-play. The Inn at Eagle Mountain, 37 suites from 1998 beside the 18th fairway, each with a kiva fireplace, a whirlpool tub and a balcony, is the obvious base. The club’s site also lists partner hotels, including one near the Mayo Clinic, which makes Eagle Mountain a practical round for families in town for appointments; our Mayo Clinic hotels note covers that corner.
Overseeding. The club doesn’t post its overseed dates online. Like nearly every course in the Valley it overseeds in the fall, so call the shop before booking in late September or October.
Dress code: collared shirts for men, shorts at least mid-thigh, spikeless shoes, no denim. Carts stay on the paths around tees and greens.
Practice and lessons. Two large putting greens, a chipping area, a practice bunker and a full-length range. The Eagle Mountain Golf Academy runs golf schools on site.
Afterwards, the Grille at Eagle Mountain in the clubhouse serves breakfast, lunch and late-afternoon appetizers every day, with no reservation needed, on a terrace with a view across the southeast Valley. For dinner, the inn’s Pietro’s does Italian Wednesday through Sunday. If you want a second round in Fountain Hills, SunRidge Canyon is a few minutes north, and We-Ko-Pa is about twenty minutes east.
A course on the far side of the mountain
Fountain Hills began in 1970 as a real-estate venture around a fountain, on the far side of the McDowells from Scottsdale, and for its first decades it was a long way from anywhere visitors went. The 1990s changed that: the town had incorporated at the end of the 1980s, the Mayo Clinic’s Scottsdale campus had opened on Shea in 1987, and Shea Boulevard became a commute.
Eagle Mountain opened in 1996 on the southwest edge of town, where the land drops toward the Valley. Scott Miller, who had spent a decade as a design associate with Jack Nicklaus before founding his own Scottsdale firm in 1988, used the ravines and box canyons instead of building over them, and set the holes to look out over the city. The Arizona Republic named it the state’s best new course. The same year Miller opened the Kierland course in north Scottsdale, and five years later We-Ko-Pa’s Cholla, a few miles east of here; the three together are a fair summary of how a Scottsdale architect of that era thought about desert land.
The Inn at Eagle Mountain followed in 1998 beside the 18th fairway, a small independent hotel that still gives the course something few public courses have, a front door you can walk to from the green. The club has collected the local honors that come to a course like this, including the Phoenix New Times naming it the best public course in its Best of Phoenix, and it has hosted the Phoenix Coyotes’ charity and NHL alumni tournaments.
Today Troon Golf owns and runs it. Nothing about it is the loudest name in Scottsdale golf, which is part of the appeal: the view is the same one the expensive courses up north are selling, at the end of a quieter road.