Twenty-seven private holes in the middle of the city
Gainey Ranch Golf Club is the private golf you can see from Scottsdale Road but cannot book. It sits inside Gainey Ranch, the gated 1980s community at the northeast corner of Scottsdale Road and Doubletree Ranch Road, behind the Grand Hyatt, on land that was Daniel C. Gainey’s Arabian horse ranch. Our Gainey Ranch lexicon entry tells the story of the name.
The club has 27 holes in three nines, all by Michael Poellot and Bradford L. Benz, played in 18-hole combinations:
- The Lakes, 3,376 yards, par 36: water on most holes and a waterfall at the finish.
- The Dunes, 3,253 yards, par 36: rolling ground, elevation and bunkers, the most rugged of the three.
- The Arroyo, 3,424 yards, par 36: the longest, through an arroyo, ending at a lake and a peninsula green.
It is a parkland-and-lakes club in the McCormick Ranch tradition rather than a desert one, with the McDowells as the backdrop. It is private, owned and run by Invited Clubs, the company formerly called ClubCorp.
The honest answer to “can I play it?” is: with a member. For a public round nearby, Scottsdale Country Club is a few minutes north on Hayden Road and Silverado is on Indian Bend.
Membership, guests and what a visitor can actually do
Membership comes in three main kinds. Golf is unrestricted play on all three nines, the practice facility, leagues, dining and social life. Limited golf is unlimited from May through October and twice a month from November through April, with year-round range and dining. Social covers dining and the social calendar, and lets you play as a golf member’s guest up to eight times a year, twice a month at most. Memberships cover a spouse and dependent children 23 and under. The XLife add-on gives two cart-fee-only rounds a month at each participating Invited club nationwide.
What it costs. The club does not publish prices. A North Scottsdale real-estate team’s club guide, updated in September 2026, lists:
- Full golf: $100,000 initiation, $1,425 a month
- Limited golf: $10,000, $825 a month
- Social: $1,000, $205 a month
Treat those as a guide and confirm with the membership director. Membership is not tied to owning a home in Gainey Ranch; residents have their own clubhouse, the Estate Club, in the old Gainey family house.
Guests play when accompanied by a member or pre-registered by one, check in at reception or the golf shop, and pay guest fees. Dining is for members and their guests, with occasional ticketed events announced in advance. The dress code is resort casual in the clubhouse, proper golf attire on the course, soft spikes only, and no ripped denim, cut-offs or gym wear in the dining rooms.
Tours are by appointment through the week and take 30 to 60 minutes; the club says applications are often approved within a few days.
What anyone can do is enjoy the corner the club sits in. The Shops at Gainey Village on Scottsdale Road is the city’s brunch district, with Frank and Lupe’s, Hash Kitchen and Wally’s, whose patio fills with members coming off the course. Sandolo at the Grand Hyatt is the gondola dinner. The Gainey Ranch neighborhood guide has the rest.
A horse ranch, a developer and a national club company
The land was Daniel C. Gainey’s. A Minnesota businessman who made his fortune in class rings, Gainey bred Arabian horses and ran Hereford cattle here. In 1980 Markland Properties bought 560 acres of the ranch (some accounts count 640, probably including the resort parcel) and, in the mid-1980s, began building what McCormick Ranch had pioneered a decade earlier to the south: a master-planned community of lakes, fairways and villages, with a resort at the front door. The golf club was its center, three nines by Poellot and Benz wrapped through the gated villages, and the Gainey family’s own house became the residents’ Estate Club. The Hyatt Regency opened at the entrance in 1986; after a renovation finished in 2024 it reopened as the Grand Hyatt Scottsdale.
The club is now part of Invited Clubs, the company long known as ClubCorp and owns private clubs across the country. That ownership explains the membership structure: tiers that suit both full-time residents and part-year ones, a limited-golf category priced around the summer months when the course is quiet, and network privileges that let members play other Invited clubs when they travel.
Some descriptions still call it semi-private: one real-estate guide says it offers tee times to the public and to Hyatt guests. The club’s own site is plainer: members, and guests who come with them or are pre-registered by them. Go by the club. That leaves visitors with the view from the patio at Wally’s, which, on a January afternoon with the McDowells going pink behind the 27 holes, is not a bad consolation. For public golf without a resort rate, see golf without a membership.