Thirty-six holes for people who like golf architecture
Talking Stick Golf Club is the course that golf-architecture people go out of their way to see, ten minutes east of Old Town. The Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community opened it in 1998 on its land east of the Loop 101, and owns and runs it today. It was the first thing the Community called Talking Stick; the casino tower and the ballpark took the name later.
Both courses are by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, among the first public desert courses the pair built, and they were told to make them play nothing alike:
- O’odham (formerly the North Course): par 70, 7,133 yards. Wide, angular fairways on nearly flat ground, low crowned greens with closely mown approaches, no artificial lakes. You can play it along the ground, which almost no course in the Valley lets you do.
- Piipaash (formerly the South Course): par 71, 6,833 yards. Tree-lined corridors of eucalyptus and cottonwood, raised, well-bunkered greens, and water in play on several holes. What you see is what you get, and you still have to hit it.
There are no mountainsides and no forced carries. If you came to Scottsdale for boulders, go to Troon North. If you came for golf that rewards thinking, start here, and walk.
Booking it, and what it costs
Tee times go through the club’s website or the shop at 480-860-2221. The club runs separate booking channels for daily-fee visitors, Arizona residents, Community members and cardholders; as a visitor you want the daily-fee one. The club may move your time ten minutes either way and pair a group of fewer than four with other players. Cancel at least 48 hours ahead, or a no-show is charged at the posted rate for every spot.
The price is dynamic: it moves with the date, demand and booking history, and the club does not publish a rate card, so check the booking page for your day. What is fixed: range balls are included with the round, and riders pay $35 when a cart is available. Locals who play often buy the Talking Stick Card, $129 for the October 2026 to September 2027 season, which gives discounted rates for times booked within three days plus a free round.
Twilight works the way it does everywhere in the Valley, with the rate falling through the afternoon; our tee time and twilight entry explains the pattern. For 36 holes, book two same-day times, one on each course, four and a half to five hours apart, and tell the shop at check-in.
Walking is allowed, push carts are free while they last, and you can bring your own. Carts follow the 90-degree rule and must stay at least 30 yards from every green and off the desert.
Dress code: collared shirts; no denim, cut-off shorts, T-shirts or tank tops; Bermuda-length shorts; soft spikes. No outside food or drink; Arizona law forbids bringing alcohol onto the premises.
Overseeding. In 2026 overseeding closed O’odham from September 27 to October 15, then cart path only through November 5, and Piipaash from October 18 to November 5, cart path only to about Thanksgiving. Summer aerification closes each course for a couple of weeks in June, July and August. The schedule is on the club’s maintenance page.
The practice ground is the biggest public one in the Valley: 150 yards wide and 360 long, natural grass, open to anyone, closing around 5 to 6 p.m. depending on the month. Rental clubs are $85 plus tax with two sleeves of balls, first come, first served.
The holes to know. On O’odham the club points to the split-fairway par-4 12th, where the side you choose decides the approach, and the long par-3 11th runs 261 yards from the back tee. On Piipaash the green complexes are the hazard: miss the raised greens and you are chipping uphill to a crown.
Afterwards, the clubhouse Grill looks across the fairways to Pinnacle Peak and the McDowells, and the Sandwich House by the range, built in the style of the traditional O’odham and Piipaash sandwich houses, does hot dogs and local beer at the turn. For dinner, Talking Stick Resort is down the same road, with Orange Sky on its 15th floor for the sunset and Ocean Trail for something quicker; Cholla Prime at Casino Arizona is the old-school steak.
The Community’s first Talking Stick
The Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community is a sovereign nation of more than 52,000 acres between Scottsdale and Mesa, home to two peoples: the Akimel O’odham, the River People, whose farming canals along the Salt and Gila go back thousands of years, and the Xalychidom Piipaash, who came from the Colorado River country and joined them in the 1800s. Our O’odham and Piipaash entry tells that story.
In the 1990s the Community was building businesses on its land along the new Pima Freeway corridor. The golf club opened in 1998 as part of what the club calls an initiative to create lasting economic development while honoring the land, and it took a name the Community would put on everything that followed: Talking Stick, a contemporary version of the calendar stick the Pima and Maricopa carved to record the significant events of their years, and a symbol, the club says, of the respect in council that lets each voice be heard. The carvings on the club’s logo reappear across the district.
The architects were an inspired choice. Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw had founded their firm in 1986 on an admiration for the strategic courses of the 1920s and 1930s, and before their famous later work they were given flat, open desert and asked for two public courses that played completely differently. Their own description of the brief: the North Course, with broad, angular holes, rewards thoughtful play and invites running shots as well as aerial ones; the South Course, tree-lined with raised greens, asks for the ball in the air. Instead of inventing elevation, they worked with the flatness.
It wasn’t the first golf on Community land, though. Two older public courses had come and gone nearby. Pavilion Lakes, at 8870 E. Indian Bend Road, was an 18-hole, par-71 course of about 6,500 yards with seven lakes. Golf directories date it to 1948 and others to 1960, and the historian Joan Fudala traces it through earlier names: Indian Bend Country Club, the Roadrunner and Pima Golf Resort. It had deteriorated by the time it closed in 2008 or 2009, and Salt River Fields was built on its land. Cypress Golf Course, at 10801 E. McDowell Road, was two nines designed by Ben Bocchini, a par-36 long nine and a par-30 executive nine, which opened around 1968 and closed in 2008. Neither has a guide of its own; the record on both is directory listings and a line in Fudala’s list of lost Scottsdale places.
The rest of the district grew up around the courses. Casino Arizona opened in 1998, Talking Stick Resort in 2010, Salt River Fields in 2011. Somewhere along the way the courses lost their compass-point names and became O’odham and Piipaash, for the two peoples whose land they are on. The clubhouse is decorated with Native American artifacts and artwork, and the Huhugam Ki Museum, a few miles south, is the place to learn what the names mean.
It is the quietest of the famous courses on this list and the most underrated. Golf magazines rank the Scottsdale desert courses by drama; architects rank this one by ideas.