The public club that looks private
Grayhawk is the golf club people assume they can’t get into. It has the gatehouse look, the tile-roofed clubhouse, a tour pedigree and a community wrapped around it, and it has been 100 percent public since it opened in 1994. Anyone can book a tee time, and anyone can eat there.
There are two courses at 8620 E Thompson Peak Pkwy, between Scottsdale and Pima roads:
- Raptor, Tom Fazio’s 1995 course: par 72, 7,151 yards, generous fairways, deep greenside bunkers and big rolling greens. It is the one the PGA Tour used from 2007 to 2009 and the NCAA used for its national championships from 2021 to 2023.
- Talon, the 1994 original by architect Gary Panks and David Graham, the 1981 U.S. Open champion: par 72, 6,973 yards, tighter-looking from the tee, with a back nine laid out along the edges of deep box canyons.
The short version: Raptor is the better test, Talon the better views, and either is a little more forgiving than Troon North. What Grayhawk does better than any course in town is the evening after, on three patios that do not care whether you played.
Booking it, and what it costs
Tee times are booked on Grayhawk’s own online tee sheet or at 480-502-1800. In mid-October 2026 the sheet was taking bookings into early January. Grayhawk sells 27- and 36-hole specials: book the first round online, then call the shop for the second nine or eighteen, which must be played the same day.
What it costs. Grayhawk prices by date and hour. On its booking page in mid-October 2026, morning tee times from late October through early January ran about $325 to $400, with a Raptor morning in early November at $391 to $398. After about 2 p.m. the same days dropped to about $230 to $265. Every round carries a 5% Course Water Resource Fee on top. Summer rates fall far below these; the peak is February and March, when the snowbirds and the Phoenix Open crowd are in town and the sheet fills weeks ahead.
Twilight is the honest deal. The drop after 2 p.m. is more than $100 a player in late fall, and on a November afternoon you still have the light for eighteen. Our tee time and twilight entry explains how the Valley’s courses price the late afternoon.
The rules of the cart. Each tee time gets two carts; a single cart is $50 extra when one is available. Both courses are 90-degree: drive the path, then turn straight across the fairway to your ball. The club asks you to expect a 4 hour 30 minute round, which in March is realistic.
Dress code: a collared shirt, golf shirt or mock neck; no cutoffs, T-shirts, jeans or denim. Golfers 17 and under must play with an adult.
Overseeding. In 2026 overseeding closed Talon from September 28 to October 11 and Raptor from October 12 to 29. Talon was cart path only from October 12 and Raptor from October 30, for a few weeks each while the rye roots. The dates move a little every year and appear on the club’s maintenance page.
The holes to know. Raptor finishes over water: the 18th plays to a green beside a lake, under the Quill Creek patio. Talon’s back nine is the scenery round, with holes that hang on the edges of box canyons through mesquite, palo verde and ironwood. Warm up on the “rock ‘n’ roll range,” where the club pipes classic rock over the practice tee.
Afterwards, you have three choices, all public:
- The Morning Joint in the clubhouse, for coffee and a breakfast burrito from 6 to 11 a.m., with lunch until 1.
- Quill Creek, now billed as Quill Creek Restaurant & Grill, with a patio over Raptor’s 18th and the lake, live music in season, and fire pits at sunset.
- Isabella’s Kitchen, the bistro next door at 8623 E Thompson Peak Pkwy, open daily 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., with a wraparound patio over Talon and the McDowells and a happy hour that fills with neighbors who have never touched a club.
There is no resort on the property. For a bachelor party or a buddies trip, our golf day guide walks through booking two foursomes here back to back.
A tour stop with no membership
Grayhawk was built in the early 1990s as the centerpiece of a 1,615-acre master-planned community in the desert north of the Princess, and its developers made an unusual bet for north Scottsdale: the golf would be daily-fee, open to anyone, and good enough to pull tournaments anyway. The name itself is a coinage with no documented origin; the courses got the bird-of-prey names to match.
Talon opened in 1994, a collaboration between Arizona architect Gary Panks and David Graham, the Australian who had won the 1979 PGA Championship and the 1981 U.S. Open. Raptor followed in 1995, designed by Tom Fazio. The events came almost at once. The Andersen Consulting World Championship of Golf, a match-play event that became the World Golf Championships’ Match Play, played its finals at Grayhawk in 1995, 1997 and 1998: Barry Lane beat David Frost on the 36th hole on Talon in the first, Greg Norman holed a 10-foot birdie putt on the last to beat Scott Hoch in 1997, and Colin Montgomerie held off Davis Love III in 1998, the first year on Raptor.
In January 2000 Grayhawk hosted the Williams World Challenge, Tiger Woods’s charity event, before it moved to California; Tom Lehman won by three over David Duval. That year the American Junior Golf Association’s Thunderbird International Junior arrived for a run that lasted to 2019, and the Thunderbirds used Grayhawk for Phoenix Open pro-ams from 1996 to 2012.
The PGA Tour came to Raptor in 2007 with the Fry’s Electronics Open. Mike Weir won it by a shot over Mark Hensby, who had shot 61; Cameron Beckman closed with 63 to win a playoff in 2008, and Troy Matteson shot back-to-back 61s and survived a three-way playoff with Jamie Lovemark and a young Rickie Fowler in 2009. Then the event left, and the club still points out that Raptor is one of only two Scottsdale courses to have hosted a PGA Tour event; the other is TPC Scottsdale.
The last big chapter was college golf. From 2021 to 2023 the NCAA played its Division I men’s and women’s championships on Raptor, set up as a 7,289-yard par 70 for the men and a 6,384-yard par 72 for the women, and broadcast on Golf Channel. Rose Zhang won the women’s individual title in 2022; Florida’s Fred Biondi won the men’s in 2023 on the way to the Gators’ team title.
None of it changed the deal at the front desk. A visitor on a Tuesday in May books the same course the tour pros and the college champions played, pays a summer rate, and eats on the same patio. In north Scottsdale, where the best golf sits behind gates, that is still the rare thing.