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 Golfers, get away from the Scottsdale grind. Leave behind the crowded roads and the
crowded courses and take a long, relaxing drive. Then do some driving that should prove even more relaxing at Estrella Mountain Ranch Golf Club.
Estrella Mountain Ranch is actually only about 50 minutes from Scottsdale (35 minutes west of downtown Phoenix), but it might as well be a world away. Situated in the
foothills of, what else, the Sierra Estrella Mountains, the Jack Nicklaus II designed course is still in its infancy.
It opened in February, and it maintains all the innocence of youth. No over-trodden or burned-out fairways. No beat-up
tee boxes. No greens that look like battlefields. At first glance, Estrella looks like a desert course with an Eastern touch.
But really it's more of an Eastern course molded into vast expanses of colorful desert. The plush Bermuda grass will
soon give way to winter rye, but the signs of transition are subtler than on other courses around the Valley.
Young Jack apparently has learned more from the Golden Bear than how to handle a sand wedge. The design shows
imagination in its twisting and turning fairways and desert washes. The desert and rough on most holes merge in an
almost seamless wave, making it difficult to tell which is intruding on the other.
That, combined with the multitude of sand traps laid out on the course, brings an element of luck to the average drive.
But Nicklaus also added wide landing areas and large, rolling greens to his creation to make the course playable for
golfers of all levels. The low-cut rough makes Estrella even friendlier to cart golfers like myself.
Estrella is a simple but impressive golf course that, from first look to last, is visitor-friendly and immaculately clean.
(My playing partner said the rest rooms on the course are the cleanest he's ever seen.) The staff is courteous and seems
to smile a lot, which is enough to remind you that you're not in Scottsdale anymore.
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