Twenty-seven holes around a resort
Kierland Golf Club is the course people mean when they say they want golf on vacation, not golf as a test. It wraps around the Westin Kierland at Scottsdale Road and Greenway, on the Phoenix side of the line with a Scottsdale address, and it is open to everyone.
There are 27 holes, all by Scottsdale architect Scott Miller, opened in 1996: three par-36 nines named for desert trees.
- Ironwood, 3,539 yards from the back, the longest nine.
- Acacia, 3,435 yards, with three par 5s.
- Mesquite, 3,478 yards.
You play any two as a round, from about 6,900 to 7,017 yards. Golf Digest once named it one of “America’s 9 Most Cheerful Golf Courses,” which is accurate and also tells you what it isn’t: this is not desert target golf with a forced carry on every tee. It is open, green and forgiving, with lakes and mountain views, built for a resort’s worth of golfers of every level.
The case for it: you can walk out of your room to the first tee, finish at a Scottish pub, and be at dinner across the street at Kierland Commons without getting in a car.
Booking it, and what it costs
Tee times are booked online at kierlandgolf.com or at the clubhouse, 480-922-9283. The course is managed by Troon Golf.
The price is dynamic: the club says it has replaced a standing green fee with a rate that changes with demand, so check the booking page for your date. Green fees assume a shared cart; on slow days a single-rider cart is $35 plus tax, and a non-playing ride-along is the same. You may book as a single but will be paired.
The range is open to golfers with a tee time that day, Tartan Club members and Westin guests, from an hour before your time. Resort guests can buy a range pass for $40 plus tax. The range closes at 5 p.m., and at 4 p.m. on Mondays from May.
Twilight. Afternoon rates drop here like everywhere, and on the resort package kids 12 and under play free after 3 p.m. with a paying adult, which is the family twilight round. Our tee time and twilight entry has the general rules of the late tee time.
Stay-and-play. The Westin’s golf package includes a room and one round for two per night; book it online or at 480-624-1000 with code ZZ1. A three-night Troon Golf vacation package adds a round at Troon North and one at the Boulders. The Westin Kierland Villas next door, one- and two-bedroom villas with kitchens, are the foursome alternative.
Caddies. The club runs a CaddieMaster program: $125 a player for a single-bag caddie, $75 a player for a double-bag caddie, $35 a player for a forecaddie, booked at least 48 hours ahead and cancelled at least 24 hours ahead. The suggested tip for a forecaddie is $30 to $40 a player in cash; a credit-card tip carries a 15% fee.
Overseeding is the reason to book here in October. Kierland never shuts completely. In 2026 overseeding ran September 14 to October 31 with nine holes closed at a time and eighteen open; nine holes were cart path only from September 28 and all eighteen from October 14. Summer aerification works the same way, one nine at a time in two-week blocks from June to August.
On the course, carts stay on the paths at tees and out of the native grass, and walking is permitted only with a tee time. Ironwood is the nine with an out-of-bounds road along the 4th and 6th holes.
Afterwards, Brittlebush Bar & Grill is the clubhouse pub, a Scottish-accented room with a stone fireplace and a patio over the fairways (reservations at 480-624-1616). At sunset the Westin’s bagpiper plays the lawn. Across Greenway, Kierland Commons has North Italia, the original, and The Mission.
The golf course a district was built around
The land belonged to Bob and Kax Herberger, Minnesota department-store money who moved to the Valley in 1949 and bought 730 acres of desert at the Scottsdale-Phoenix line. When Phoenix approved their Kierland master plan in 1991, the largest rezoning case in the city’s history, the golf course sat at its center. Our Kierland entry tells the family story; the name is Kax Herberger’s maiden name.
The first residential land sold in 1993 and the golf club opened in 1996, about 225 acres of the plan, designed by Scott Miller, the Scottsdale architect who had spent a decade with Jack Nicklaus’s design firm before going out on his own. Miller would go on to build Eagle Mountain in Fountain Hills the same year and We-Ko-Pa’s Cholla course in 2001, but Kierland is his gentlest work: a resort course before there was a resort.
The rest of the district filled in around it. Kierland Commons, Arizona’s first open-air lifestyle center, opened its first stores in 2000. The Westin Kierland followed in 2002 on a 37-acre site inside the course, and the club became its resort golf: the Brittlebush pub, the Tartan Club for regulars, the Scottish touches that run all the way to the bagpiper on the lawn. The Herbergers’ family history is Minnesotan, not Scottish; the theme belongs to the resort.
Since 2009 the course has held Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary certification, and it takes the program seriously: it has cut its water, fertilizer and fuel use, and its staff photograph vermilion flycatchers and, in 2022, a family of great horned owls that raised two chicks over the fairways. It is a good reminder of what a resort course in the middle of a city can be: green, yes, but also habitat.