Where to play golf in Phoenix and Scottsdale? The best public courses

Arizona is home to a great selection of desert golf courses, and most of those are centered around Phoenix and Scottsdale. But which are the best?

Thanks to Golfweek’s Best annual rankings of top public-access courses in each state, we can break out the highest-ranked layouts in the Phoenix and Scottsdale area. For the purpose of this exercise, we limited driving time to about an hour from Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. (We used Google Maps for its drive times, keying in the courses on a mid-afternoon – take all drive times around the Valley of the Sun with a grain of salt, of course.)

There are other options not included here, courses that were beyond that hour limit. If you have a little more time for the drive, Wickenburg Ranch’s Big Wick course ranks No. 2 among all public-access courses in the state, but it’s about 90 minutes northwest of the airport. Similar story for several strong options in Tucson about two hours to the southeast.

A little background on how we do this: The hundreds of members of our course-ratings panel continually evaluate courses and rate them on 10 criteria on a points basis of 1 through 10. They also file a single, overall rating on each course. Those overall ratings are averaged to produce all our Golfweek’s Best course rankings.

The courses on this list allow public access in some fashion, be it standard daily green fees, through a resort or by staying at an affiliated hotel. If there’s a will, there’s a tee time – no membership required.

Keep scrolling to see how they stack up, and check out the accompanying map to get a handle on roughly where everything is located.

The Faldo Championship Course at Wildfire Golf Club at Desert Ridge in Arizona (Courtesy of Wildfire Golf Club)

Where: Phoenix
State Ranking 2023: T-29 public-access in Arizona
Designers: Nick Faldo, Brian Curley, Lee Schmidt
Distance: 25 minutes north of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport

Camelback’s Ambiente Course in Arizona (Courtesy of Camelback Golf Club)

Where: Scottsdale
State Ranking 2023: T-29 public-access in Arizona
Designer: Jason Straka
Distance: 25 minutes northeast of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport

Legacy Golf Club in Arizona (Courtesy of Legacy Golf Club)

Where: Phoenix (m)
State Ranking 2023: T-26 public-access in Arizona
Designer: Gary Panks
Distance: 12 minutes south of Phoenix Sky Harbor…