The Ultimate Scottsdale Golf Trip Itinerary for Groups

Scottsdale is the most efficient group golf trip in America. Two hundred courses within an hour, a nonstop flight from almost anywhere, an airport twenty-five minutes from your bed, a downtown built around bars that stay open, and eight months a year of guaranteed sunshine. No other destination makes it this easy to get eight people playing golf together.

Which is exactly why so many Scottsdale trips are mediocre. When everything is available, groups default to whatever the resort concierge suggests and end up paying peak rates for the fourth-best course in a five-mile radius. Here is a four-day itinerary that does not.

When to go, and what it costs you

Late October through early December is the answer for most groups. You get 80-degree afternoons, courses in excellent condition coming out of overseeding, and rates that have not yet climbed into the winter peak. March is the other strong option because the Cactus League is in town and a spring training game is the best non-golf afternoon on the calendar.

The courses worth your money

TPC Scottsdale — Stadium Course

Weiskopf and Morrish, and the reason your group is looking at Scottsdale in the first place. The 16th is the famous one — a par 3 in a coliseum that seats twenty thousand people for the WM Phoenix Open and sits empty and strange the other fifty-one weeks. Play it anyway. The stands are up for much of the winter and hitting into that amphitheatre is a genuinely unusual golf experience. Expect $400 to $650 in peak season, half that in the fall.

The Champions Course next door is the value sibling at roughly a third of the price, and it is a perfectly good golf course. If your group is playing four rounds and wants to spend the savings on dinner, put the Champions in the rotation instead of a second premium round.

We-Ko-Pa — Saguaro

Thirty-five minutes northeast on Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation land, and the best golf course in the metro area. Saguaro is a Coore & Crenshaw design with no houses anywhere on it — a rarity in Arizona, where most desert courses are threaded between subdivisions. Wide corridors, firm turf, and it is genuinely walkable, which almost nothing else here is. The Cholla course alongside it is more traditional target golf and also excellent. Roughly $200 to $300 at peak.

Troon North — Monument

The postcard version of desert golf: granite boulders the size of cars, saguaros framing every fairway, and Pinnacle Peak over your shoulder. Monument is the better of the two courses and the one worth the premium. It is target golf in the purest sense — hit the fairway or spend the afternoon in cholla. $250 to $400 depending on the month.

Talking Stick — North

The sleeper. Coore & Crenshaw built two courses on Salt River Pima-Maricopa land, and the North is a flat, treeless, prairie-style routing that looks nothing like the rest of Arizona. No desert carries, no forced heroics, just angles and firm ground. It is fifteen minutes from Old Town, it is roughly $175 to $250, and it is the round your 22-handicap will enjoy most all week.

The rest of the rotation

• Grayhawk — Raptor and Talon, home of the NCAA Championships. Excellent conditioning, a great clubhouse, $250–$350.
• Boulders Resort — North and South in Carefree, threaded through twelve-million-year-old rock formations. $200–$300.
• Papago Golf Club — Phoenix municipal, a classic William Bell design, $60–$120. The best cheap round in the valley.
• Quintero — an hour northwest in Peoria and routinely rated the top public course in Arizona. A day trip, but the right kind.
• Mountain Shadows Short Course — an 18-hole par 3 at the foot of Camelback. Perfect for the afternoon after an early round.

Where to stay

Old Town Scottsdale — the group default

If your group intends to go out at night, stay in Old Town and nowhere else. Hotel Valley Ho, the Canopy, the Saguaro, and a cluster of newer properties put you inside walking distance of every bar and restaurant worth visiting. Nobody drives. Nobody argues about who is driving. $250 to $450 per room, per night, in season.

North Scottsdale resorts — the quiet option

The Fairmont Princess, Four Seasons Troon North, and the Boulders are genuinely excellent resorts with golf on site or next door. They are also twenty-five minutes from anywhere with a pulse. Right for a group with families along, wrong for eight guys on a golf trip.

Rental homes — the smart money for eight

This is the move for groups of six or more. A four- or five-bedroom house within walking distance of Old Town runs $900 to $1,600 a night in season, which splits eight ways to less than half a hotel room each. You get a kitchen, a pool, a place to play cards, and a base that does not require a lobby conversation at midnight. Book it before you book anything else — the good ones go first.

The four-day itinerary

Day 1 — arrive, loosen up, eat well

Land at Sky Harbor before two. Twenty-five minutes to the house. Drop bags, then play the Mountain Shadows Short Course at four o’clock — eighteen par-3s, ninety minutes, a beer in the cart, and everybody’s hands are working again after a travel day. Dinner at Citizen Public House or The Mission in Old Town. One drink at the Rusty Spur, which is a genuine honky tonk the size of a living room, and then bed. You have an early tee time.

Day 2 — Talking Stick North

An 8:20 tee time fifteen minutes from the house. Start the week on the most forgiving course in the rotation so the high handicaps in the group do not spend day one in the desert. Lunch at the turn, done by two. Afternoon at the pool. Dinner at Steak 44 or Dominick’s — book this one weeks out, it is the big meal of the trip. Then Old Town for as long as the group holds up.

Day 3 — TPC Scottsdale, Stadium Course

The main event, mid-morning. Take the forecaddie; the Stadium has more blind lines than it appears to from television. Walk out to 16 with an extra ball in your pocket and hit a second one for the story. Post-round beers on the clubhouse patio, then an easy night — Diego Pops or Cold Beers & Cheeseburgers, back to the house, and a card game. Day four is the long one.

Day 4 — We-Ko-Pa Saguaro

Thirty-five minutes northeast, 9am, and the best golf course of the week. Walk it if your group is capable — Saguaro is one of the few desert courses designed to be walked, and it plays completely differently on foot. The drive back down through the Fort McDowell land at sunset is the image everybody takes home. Final dinner at FnB, then Old Town.

Day 5 — the optional fifth round

If you have a late flight, Papago at 7am is $80, twenty minutes from the airport, and finished by 11:30. It is the single best use of a departure morning in American golf.

Dining and nightlife

• Steak 44 / Dominick’s / Mastro’s City Hall — the three big steakhouses. Any of them works. All require reservations well in advance for eight.
• FnB — the best restaurant in Old Town for actual food, Arizona-focused and small. Book early.
• Citizen Public House — the reliable group dinner. Good food, loud enough, and the Original Chopped Salad is worth the hype.
• Diego Pops / Hot Chick / Cold Beers & Cheeseburgers — the casual rotation. No reservations, no problems.
• Bottled Blonde, Casa Amigos, El Hefe — Old Town nightlife proper. Loud, packed, and exactly what your group either wants or is trying to avoid.
• Rusty Spur Saloon — the one place in Old Town that has not changed since 1951. Go once, early, before the crowd.
• Breakfast — Butters, Morning Squeeze, or The Breakfast Club. Get there before the 9am rush or you are waiting forty minutes with a tee time.

What it costs per person

Call it $2,600 per person for a well-planned fall trip and $4,000 for the same trip in March with premium courses every day. That makes Scottsdale roughly a third cheaper than Pebble Beach for the same number of nights, which is a large part of why it is the most-booked group golf destination in the country.

Logistics

• Airport — Sky Harbor (PHX) is twenty to thirty minutes from Old Town with nonstops from nearly every major market. Scottsdale Airport (SDL) handles private.
• Getting around — two full-size SUVs for eight players with clubs. Rideshare works well in Old Town at night and you should use it.
• Carts — mandatory at nearly every desert course, and frequently cart-path-only. Budget the walk from path to ball into your pace of play.
• Clubs — shipping runs $150–$250 round trip. For a four-day trip with two SUVs, checking bags is usually simpler.
• Tee times — premium courses open bookings 60 to 90 days out and the good morning slots on those courses go immediately. This is the one thing you cannot leave late.

Five things that make the trip better

1. 1Play the early tee time every day. Desert courses are dramatically better before 10am — cooler, quieter, and the light on the McDowells is worth the alarm.
2. 2Put the worst player in the group on the best course. Not the other way round. They will remember it, and the round nobody enjoys is the one where the 20-handicap is losing balls in cholla on the hardest course.
3. 3Book the steak dinner before you book the flights. Eight people at a good table on a Saturday in March is a genuinely hard reservation.
4. 4Use the desert as a hazard, not a challenge. Take the drop. The ball is not there and neither is your ankle.
5. 5Go in November instead of March. Same golf, same weather, thirty-five percent less money, and every tee sheet has room.

The itinerary above takes most groups about fifteen hours of collective research, six weeks of group-chat negotiation, and one person doing all of it. Alfred does the same work in a couple of minutes and gives everybody the same per-person number to say yes to — which, as we argue in this piece on what a golf trip concierge actually does, is the part that was always the real problem.