Arizona golf is the deepest private-club scene in the desert Southwest - and the contrast is the whole story. Around Scottsdale and Flagstaff, a gated aristocracy of Fazio, Nicklaus, Weiskopf and Morrish designs anchors the national rankings; out in the open, a handful of public courses - We-Ko-Pa's Saguaro, Quintero, Talking Stick, the Stadium - rank with anyone. Most rankings split those worlds apart. This list puts them back together - one blended top 20, ordered by course quality, with every entry tagged so you know exactly where you stand.
How we ranked: we cross-referenced the state lists from Golf Digest, Golfweek, and GOLF Magazine, then applied our own weighting of architecture, setting, conditioning, and championship history. The top is settled: Golf Digest ranks Estancia first in the state and Forest Highlands' Canyon second, GOLF Magazine agrees on the Canyon at second with Scottsdale National's Other Course first, so Estancia leads our blend. TPC Scottsdale's Stadium sits at No. 20 - the most famous course in the state, and the one the national spotlight finds every February. Where the panels split further down, we made the call - and said why.
Golf Digest's 2025-26 state ranking puts Estancia first in Arizona, and it has held that spot since 2011. Fazio tucked the course under the north slope of Pinnacle Peak with wide turf corridors, few forced desert carries, and greens wilder than most - what Golf Digest calls an easterner's version of rock-and-cactus architecture. A former America's 100 Greatest regular and the club that made Scottsdale's north side the state's private-club capital.
The one course both national panels agree on: second in Arizona on Golf Digest's and GOLF Magazine's current lists. Weiskopf and Morrish routed the Canyon through ponderosa pines at 7,000 feet in 1988, and it sat on Golf Digest's 100 Greatest for 24 straight years. Three long par 5s, six par 3s spaced like drumbeats, and a 9th hole that drops down an escarpment into a stream valley - high-country golf at its most elegant.
The youngest course on this list and already Golf Digest's third-ranked course in Arizona - and No. 1 in the state on GOLF Magazine's 2024-25 list. Tim Jackson and David Kahn built the Other Course on a flat, featureless parcel by moving 1.5 million cubic yards of dirt, and invented its signature as they did it: six par 3s, six par 4s, six par 5s, with no two consecutive holes of the same par anywhere in the round. Playable for everyone, fascinating for the purist.
Fazio's second act at Whisper Rock was built for a low-handicap membership full of tour pros - and he couldn't resist making it a crowd-pleaser anyway. Demanding angles to diagonal fairways from the back tees give way to generous landing areas for everyone else, and a four-hole stretch threads through towers of balanced granite boulders above Pinnacle Peak. Golf Digest's fourth-ranked course in Arizona and a fixture on the national Second 100.
Phil Mickelson's design debut, built with Gary Stephenson in 2001, and deliberately unlike anything else in Scottsdale: fairways recessed into the landscape for elevation change, flush tee boxes, long narrow greens edged by chipping hollows - what Mickelson calls his Pinehurst greens. Wide, playable, and full of second-shot questions, with a three-foot stacked-rock wall guarding the par-5 third that is pure theater. Golf Digest's fifth-ranked course in the state.
The grandfather of desert golf: Red Lawrence's 1962 design was the first course in the Southwest built around the desert instead of over it, earning him the nickname Desert Fox. Almost no earth was moved - narrow, rolling fairways follow the natural terrain under Black Mountain, with no out-of-bounds stakes, no fairway bunkers, and no water. Golf Magazine once ranked it among the 50 greatest courses of the modern era, and it has appeared on Golf Digest's 100 Greatest across five decades.
Jay Morrish's desert masterpiece and the only Tucson-area course ever to reach Golf Digest's 100 Greatest. Routed through the Tortolita Mountains with forced carries over barrancas off the tee, bunkers that look spun by nature, and ancient granite boulders that frame the strategy rather than decorate it. Hosted The Match on TNT in 2020, introducing a national TV audience to the most dramatic desert routing south of Phoenix.
Jack Nicklaus's 1983 statement under Pinnacle Peak - and the stage for the inaugural Skins Game that same Thanksgiving weekend, when Palmer, Player, Nicklaus and Watson played for stakes bigger than most majors paid. A Golf Digest Top 100 fixture for 25 consecutive years at its peak, Desert Highlands is the original upscale desert-residential club: strategic, exacting, and the template everything after it copied.
The best public golf in Arizona by both Golfweek's and GOLF Magazine's current measures - and a top-100 national course you can actually book. Coore and Crenshaw built the Saguaro in 2006 on tribal land beside the Verde River: wide fairways bleeding into the desert floor, fairways at grade with their surrounds, and a walking-friendly routing with 360-degree views of four mountain ranges. The rare desert course that plays like a linksland and welcomes everyone.
Morrish's final original design, finished in 2004, and his love letter to the Flagstaff pines: a tree-lined mountain championship with the San Francisco Peaks on the horizon and a ghost tree - a towering bare ponderosa fronting the 14th green - that members treat as a landmark. Paired with its 19th hole, Double or Nothin', a 100-yard island-green shot off the clubhouse patio. A fixture on Golf Digest's Arizona top 10.
Nos. 11-20: still elite company. Three of them are private Nicklaus signatures at Desert Mountain, but the three you can book - Quintero, Talking Stick's O'odham, and the Stadium - include Golfweek's No. 2 and No. 3 public courses in the state and the PGA Tour's loudest week.
The fifth of Desert Mountain's six Nicklaus Signatures, opened in 1999, playing across dramatic elevation changes with the most vertical drama on the property - and the club's modern flagship alongside the tournament-tested Cochise.
The 1987 original that launched Desert Mountain - and one of the most inventive designs of its decade: seven tee boxes and two pin placements per hole, six double greens, a genuine choose-your-own-adventure round that Golf Digest named one of the important designs of the 1980s.
Weiskopf's 1999 companion to the Canyon - a walkable parkland among tall pines, wildflowers and wetlands with views of the San Francisco Peaks, and a three-time USGA championship host (2006 U.S. Mid-Amateur, 2014 U.S. Girls' Junior, 2019 U.S. Women's Mid-Amateur).
Weiskopf's 2002 course winding 7,322 yards through Horseshoe Canyon in the McDowell Mountains - well-bunkered, with significant green undulation, a celebrated practice facility where tour pros prepare, and a Golf Digest Arizona top-10 regular.
Weiskopf's first-ever design, built with Morrish in 1986 and named for the Scottish Open venue where he won the 1973 Open Championship - the course that started both his architecture career and the Troon golf empire, refreshed in a $4.6 million 2020 renovation.
Weiskopf calls the 1999 Rim the best of the 28 courses he and Morrish built together: boulder outcroppings, dramatic elevation changes and 200-mile views of the Mogollon Rim from a high-desert site an hour and a half north of the Valley.
Nicklaus's 1989 third course at Desert Mountain - 7,293 yards of drama across deep ravines and scenic plateaus, and one of the club's most consistently panel-loved Nicklaus layouts.
Rees Jones routed Quintero through untouched desert northwest of the Valley in 2000, and Golf Digest ranks it among the 100 Greatest Public courses in America - untouched saguaro country with drama Golfweek's Arizona public list has at No. 2.
Coore and Crenshaw's flat-desert masterclass from 1997: wide fairways, the proper angles rewarded, no forced carries - the antithesis of target golf, and the public course GOLF Magazine's state list ranks ahead of several far more famous names.
The most famous course in Arizona: Morrish and Weiskopf's 1986 Stadium hosts the WM Phoenix Open and its 20,000-fan 16th-hole Coliseum. The only current PGA Tour venue on this list - and the one everyone can book. Dynamic pricing runs roughly $436-$550 at peak, and the championship Black tees play 74.7 / 142. Our flagship review covers it in full.
Desert Mountain's Cochise (The Tradition's longtime Champions Tour home) and Outlaw courses, Troon North's Monument and Pinnacle, We-Ko-Pa's Cholla, Grayhawk's Raptor and Talon, Ak-Chin Southern Dunes, the Gallery's North and South in Marana, Dove Mountain (the old WGC Match Play venue), Seven Canyons in Sedona, Chaparral Pines, Mirabel, and Flagstaff Ranch all have genuine claims to a spot - on another panel's ballot, several of them make the cut.
Start with our Arizona state guide for trip planning, regions, and when to go. The bookable stars on this list anchor very different trips: We-Ko-Pa for the purist's desert walk, Quintero for untouched saguaro drama, Talking Stick for the Coore & Crenshaw angles at public prices, or Scottsdale for our flagship TPC Scottsdale review and the Coliseum 16th. Our trip cost estimator will ballpark the damage before you book.