The original Troon
Scottsdale has a lot of things called Troon, and this is the one the rest are named after. Troon Country Club opened in 1986 as the first golf course Tom Weiskopf ever designed, built with the architect Jay Morrish, and Weiskopf named it for Royal Troon on the Ayrshire coast, where he won the 1973 Open Championship by three shots over Johnny Miller and Neil Coles. Our Troon lexicon entry follows the name from here to Troon North, the neighborhoods and a global golf company.
The club sits in Troon Village, a gated golf community of about 1,400 acres at the base of Pinnacle Peak, Troon Mountain and the McDowells. It was one of the original desert courses of the 1980s, routed through a canyon with low-density homes backing onto the back nine. Two holes carry its reputation: the 207-yard 7th, “The Lake,” the hardest of the par 3s, and the 139-yard 15th, played across a ravine to a plateau green surrounded by cactus.
It is also a championship venue. Troon has hosted three USGA national championships, the 1990 and 2025 U.S. Mid-Amateurs and the 2023 U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur, and the Arizona Open a record 11 times as of 2018.
And it is private. Troon is members and their invited guests. The public courses with the same architects and the same boulders are Troon North, a short drive north.
Membership, guests and what visitors can do
Membership is non-equity and comes in two main forms: Premier Full Golf, with unlimited golf, practice and every club privilege for the member, spouse and dependent children under 23, and Signature Sport/Social, for tennis, pickleball, bocce, fitness, the lap pool and the social calendar. The inquiry form also lists an associate golf category for players under 50. The club does not publish prices; ask the membership director.
What members get: seven-day advance tee times, a double-sided range with putting green, two bunkers, a chipping area and a teaching complex, GPS carts that take food orders, a 9,000-square-foot wellness center, a 25-meter heated lap pool, a lighted tennis court and pickleball courts, and dining in the Quail’s Nest, the Vista Restaurant and the Poolside Grille, with patio views of Pinnacle Peak and the city lights. Valet and a continental breakfast are complimentary. A real-estate guide notes that Troon and Royal Troon members have reciprocal privileges.
Guests play on a member’s invitation; the club’s invited-guest pages give directions for them. There is no way to buy a round.
For visitors, the best access to Troon is from above. The Pinnacle Peak Park trail looks out over the golf communities around the peak, and the Tom’s Thumb trailhead is a short drive east. For a meal, the Four Seasons and its Talavera are at Troon North, and the Pinnacle Peak Patio and Reata Pass are the cowboy steak options. Our Pinnacle Peak and Troon guide covers the district.
Where Weiskopf and Morrish started
In the mid-1980s Tom Weiskopf, whose playing career had peaked at Royal Troon in 1973, teamed with the architect Jay Morrish. Troon was their first course together and Weiskopf’s first anywhere, and it set the pattern for a partnership that went on to build the Stadium Course at TPC Scottsdale, opened the same year, and then Troon North in 1990. The Troon name went with them, and eventually onto Troon Golf, the management company that now runs courses around the world.
From the start Troon was meant to test good players. From 1987 to 1993 it was home to the Ping Pro-Scratch Invitational, which paired touring professionals with elite amateurs and brought Mark Brooks, Steve Jones, Phil Mickelson, Fuzzy Zoeller and Weiskopf himself to the club. The USGA came in 1990 for the U.S. Mid-Amateur, and the Arizona Open became a near-fixture.
In 2020, Weiskopf returned with design consultant Phil Smith for a seven-month renovation: a new irrigation system, bunkers rebuilt with Capillary Concrete linings, greens resurfaced in A4 bentgrass, and tees, fairways and rough regrassed in Tifway 419 Bermuda. Since then the USGA has brought the 2023 U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur and the 2025 U.S. Mid-Amateur, played September 13 to 18, to Troon. The club is also a certified Audubon sanctuary.
The neighbors are the other half of the area’s golf history. Pinnacle Peak Country Club, a few miles west on Pinnacle Peak Road, was the first private club in north Scottsdale, founded in 1976 a decade before Troon. And the Silverleaf Club in DC Ranch is Weiskopf’s later work in the same mountains. For the courses anyone can book, see golf without a membership.