Starfire is Scottsdale Country Club again
If you are looking for Starfire, you have found it. The public course at 11500 N Hayden Rd, a mile north of Shea in the middle of the city, went by Starfire Golf Club for most of the last quarter century. In 2026 its owners, Swing First Golf, gave it back the name it carried for forty years before that: Scottsdale Country Club.
The name is misleading in one way and honest in another. It is not private. Anyone can book a tee time, and the owners’ own slogan is “the People’s Country Club.” But it is the real Scottsdale Country Club, on the same ground: the club says it is the oldest golf course in Scottsdale, opened in December 1953 as Sundown Ranch, when a tee time cost $2 and you could rent a horse.
What is there now:
- The Roadrunner, the 18. A Lawrence Hughes original reworked by Arnold Palmer’s design team in the 1990s: par 70, just over 6,100 yards, flat, tree-lined and parkland, with water at the nearly-island par-3 4th and on the 16th and 17th.
- The Snake, a 12-hole short course by Forrest Richardson, par 37, about 2,100 yards, with two back-to-back par 4s and a 40-yard putting hole. It plays in under 90 minutes.
- The Bandana, a free nine-hole putting course through a rock garden, made for an evening and a drink.
- The Range: 24 covered bays, every one with TrackMan, and the Kostis Academy for lessons.
It is the round to book when you want golf in central Scottsdale, close to McCormick Ranch and the Shea corridor, without driving north or paying the north’s prices.
What it costs, how to book, and what to expect
Tee times are booked online through the club’s site. Rates float with the day and the hour. Checked in October 2026, the Roadrunner’s online rates for Thursday, November 12 ran about $90 to $108 in the morning and down to $45 late in the afternoon; for Saturday, November 14, about $132 to $144 in the morning and $54 late. Peak winter weeks will run higher. Twilight is the bargain here as everywhere; see our tee time and twilight entry.
The Swing First Golf Card costs $169, runs to September 30, and includes a free round (not valid January 1 through March 31, 2027), 15% off tee times for the year at Swing First’s courses (the group also runs Union Hills, Coyote Lakes, San Tan Highlands and Palmbrook), 15% off merchandise and non-alcoholic food and drink, and a 7-day booking window at card rates. It is the local’s play if you will be here a while.
Walking. The club does not post a walking policy online. The Roadrunner is flat and compact, so ask the pro shop at (480) 948-6000 when you book.
The range is the best reason to come even if you are not playing: 24 covered bays with TrackMan, seating for four in each, balls at $10 for 25, $25 for 70 or $35 for 100, bought at the machine by card. It opens at 7 a.m. and closes at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday and at 5:30 p.m. on Mondays. It is bays only, no grass tee.
Food and drink. The Grill is in the clubhouse. The Robin’s Nest, an Airstream coffee bar and beer garden at the turn, opened in March 2026. The Last Shot, a hot dog, sandwich and full-bar stand at the range by the Snake’s 3rd hole, is due to open in early November 2026, and the owners describe Brand 53, named for the 1953 founding, as an upcoming flagship restaurant and bar.
The closure. The 2026 overseed closed every facility through October 2; the club reopened on October 3. Plan around the last week of September and the first days of October in future years, and check the site.
Dinner after is easy in this part of town: Shea Boulevard is a mile south, with Sushi on Shea and the rest of the corridor, and Razz’s on Scottsdale Road.
From Sundown Ranch to Starfire and back
The club’s history begins with a guest ranch. Sundown Ranch opened in December 1953, two years after Scottsdale incorporated, on desert well north of the town: stables, horseback riding, winter cottages and a golf course, with tee times for $2. That makes it, by the club’s account, the first golf course built in Scottsdale, and one of the few in Arizona that predate the golf boom of the 1960s. See our 1950s chapter for the town it was built beside.
In 1959 new owners bought Sundown Ranch and renamed it Scottsdale Country Club. As the city grew north along Hayden Road, more holes were added in the 1980s and neighborhoods filled in around the fairways. Lawrence Hughes’s original 18 was reworked in the 1990s by Arnold Palmer’s design team. After an ownership change in 1999, the club became a public course, the one most Scottsdale golfers knew as Starfire, with an executive course that went by the Mulligan and then the Six Shooter before it became the Snake.
Swing First Golf bought the property in 2024. Its principals describe themselves as Scottsdale natives who grew up playing the course, and their stated aim is to restore it in time for its 75th anniversary in 2028. After a year of planning, work began in late 2025: the covered TrackMan range, the reworked 12-hole Snake by Forrest Richardson, the Bandana putting course, the Robin’s Nest and, in 2026, the old name back on the sign.
That name is the reason for confusion in the search box. There is no separate private Scottsdale Country Club; this is it, public, with the same Hayden Road address it has had since the ranch. For the private clubs of central Scottsdale, look at Gainey Ranch Golf Club, a short drive south at Doubletree Ranch Road. For the other public value round in the middle of the city, Silverado is on Indian Bend Road along the Greenbelt.