Desert Highlands

Lyle Anderson contracted Jack Nicklaus to build a course around a sizeable Scottsdale residential development in the early 1980s and the Golden Bear with his senior designer Bob Cupp duly obliged by laying out eighteen rather testing holes on an arid property bereft of any water hazard.

Desert Highlands Golf Club made its mark in 1983 when it hosted the first televised Skins Game between Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Gary Player and Tom Watson. Eight years later, in 1991, Sarah LeBrun Ingram won her first of three U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur Championship titles here. Such early exposure propelled Desert Highlands into the national listings but the course still enjoys a creditable state ranking position.

Memorable holes on the card include the three par fours at 6, 8 and 13, each of which is played to a split fairway. A round here also ends in unorthodox fashion with back to back par threes at 15 and 16, followed by a couple of closing par fives.

"Perhaps the greatest impact Jack Nicklaus made on golf course architecture occurred with the opening of Desert Highlands," wrote Geoff Cornish and Ron Whitten in The Architects of Golf. "Desert Highlands issued in another facet of course architecture, the blending of golf into the hostile terrain of an arid desert. Strict governmental restrictions, which included the transplantation of virtually every desert plant disturbed during construction and a limitation upon the acreage that could be irrigated, forced Nicklaus and his design team to create a state-of-the-art layout that ultimately opened avenues for many desert-area communities."

In 2019, Nicklaus Design completed a $7 million course renovation project, which included renovating bunkers and restoring the original design intent of the split-fairway par four 13th hole.