About 30 minutes south of Tucson, Tubac Golf Resort and Spa is a low-key golf and spa resort set on 500 acres of Otero Ranch property. It's a convenient base to play some of southern Arizona's best courses and is usually a bit cooler compared to Tucson to the north.
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Arizona National Golf Club is a semi-private daily-fee course in Tucson and also plays home to the University of Arizona Wildcats golf team. Winding up and down the Catalina foothills, features many natural springs throughout the development, which makes this part of the desert foothills particularly lush with plant and wildlife.
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Designed by Tom Weiskopf, the Golf Club at Vistoso is one of the top daily-fee desert golf courses in Tucson. Located in the Vistoso master-planned community, the course is a target-style desert design that features many forced carries over desert shrubs and shots over cacti, including the par-4 11th hole named "Saguaro."
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The Mountain Course is one of two Tom Fazio designs built at Ventana Canyon Golf and Racquet Club in 1984. While both are similarly dramatic desert golf courses, the Mountain has made a name for itself due to one hole: the short, par-3 third that plays from an elevated tee box next to boulders, over a ravine to a small green 100 yards away tucked between boulders.
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Built in 2005 and designed by Tom Lehman, the Sonoran course at Omni Tucson National Resort is pure, modern desert golf with lots of forced carries, elevation changes and desert lining the fairways.
One of the most striking holes is the par-5 15th hole, which plays up a steep hill from the fairway up to the green.
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The Pines Golf Club at Marana is one of the Tucson area's more unique plays. In 2000, the former Links at Continental Ranch was closed and renovated in conjunction with the neighboring quarry to its present form. Ten holes are now featured within the quarry, mostly coming on the back nine, while the other eight were altered. Some 1,000 pines were also added throughout the golf course to remove the links character.
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Designed by Jay Morrish, the North Course at the Boulders Resort and Golden Door Spa boasts a target-style design that requires strategic placement off the tee and approach shots into well protected, bentgrass greens.
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The Pinnacle and Monument golf courses at Troon North Golf Club consistently rate among the best public options in Arizona. Recently rerouted, redesigned and reseeded, they're now more natural and include holes swapped between the courses. So if you've not played Troon North since before 2007, you're in for a treat.
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We-Ko-Pa Golf Club's Saguaro Course opened in 2006 and was designed by the team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, who built a walker-friendly course where most tees are usually just footsteps from the green. Laid out naturally along the desert terrain, the course has a wonderful, rolling look that never looks very manufactured.
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Omni Tucson National Catalina Course is the rare course in Arizona that's packed with golf history. Catalina Course (which has gone by other names over the years, too) has hosted more than 30 PGA Tour events. Arnold Palmer, Johnny Miller and Tom Watson have all won here.
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