Desert Forest Golf Club

Favorite Hole

No. 7, par 5, 370-551 yards

With apologies to Robert Trent Jones, this is the “heroic school” of golf architecture at its best.

Off the tee, the choice is stark: play to the generous fairway on the left, or go for an alternate fairway on the right by attempting a heroic carry over a large expanse of desert. The latter option not only shortens the hole but also gives the player a far better chance of clearing a sandy wash that cuts in front of the approach to the elevated green. From the left fairway, on the other hand, most players will need to lay up short of the wash. So the shortcut to the right, while dangerous, offers a big potential advantage. (Just ask Frieg Egg Golf’s Cameron Hurdus, who played to the right fairway and made eagle.)

All of the features relevant to the second shot—the layup fairway, the wash, the approach fairway, and the green complex—run diagonally from short left to long right, adding a layer of strategic complexity. If you decide to lay up short of the wash, you can push up within 140 yards of the green. But the more aggressive you are, the more left you’ll have to go, and the worse the angle on your third shot will become. If you try to carry the wash, you can choose between the short carry on the right, which leaves a pitch into the green from a good angle, and the long carry on the left, which gets you closer to the green but could result in a touchy recovery from short left.

The clarity of these choices and their potential consequences is a hallmark of Robert Trent Jones’s theory of “heroic design”—a theory that has been much discussed over the years but rarely implemented as expertly as Red Lawrence did on the seventh hole at Desert Forest.

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Overall Thoughts

Which golf courses deserve to be restored? In the 21st century, the golf world has more or less come to a consensus that courses built by prominent architects during the “Golden Age”—a period roughly comprising the 1910s, 20s, and 30s—should be treated as precious historical objects. The more faithful the stewardship, the better. The jury remains out, however, on whether a similar approach should be taken to courses from the middle of the 20th century, an era of golf architecture that has not attracted much admiration from architects, historians, or enthusiasts.

On the one hand, it feels arrogant simply to blow up the work of, say, Robert Trent Jones or Dick Wilson. Tastes change, after all, and perhaps someday we’ll regard Jones and Wilson more highly. On the other hand, it seems obvious that many courses built in the post-World War II period fell short in certain respects. Some adhered to a framework of championship design—long, narrow, repetitive—that many average golfers have come to reject. Others were produced according to a factory method that sacrificed quality for efficiency. To keep faulty architecture intact out of a strict sense of historical duty would be perverse.

Perhaps, then, some kind of compromise between redesign and restoration would be the best path forward for mid-20th-century courses. This was Dave Zinkand’s strategy in his 2013 renovation of Desert Forest Golf Club, and the results suggest that more clubs should follow suit.

Zinkand understood that the primary strength of Red Lawrence’s 1962 design was how his routing took advantage of the natural terrain. Lawrence’s use of preexisting contour and desert waste in the landing zones for tee shots was particularly inspired, compensating entirely for the lack of fairway bunkers. “I would say that he was perhaps in some ways helped by the fact that he had a shoestring budget and was, even in the desert, forced to take a minimalist approach,” Zinkand said. “And I think that his effort with the fairways to literally ‘roll with it’ and allow those contours to inform the golf holes was amazing.”

On the second hole, for instance, players must decide between two lines: a safe one to a visible swath of fairway on the right, or a risky, mostly blind carry over mesquite and palo verde trees on the left. The first option leads to a long, blind approach over a saguaro-studded knoll to a green bunkered on the right side. The second option shortens the hole considerably and opens up the green. As an additional reward, long drives up the left side may find a level lie on top of a ridge that runs across the fairway. With all of these strategic possibilities, there’s no need for artificial fairway bunkers. Lawrence’s use of the natural ground provides enough interest on its own.

Elsewhere on the course, Zinkand found subtle ways to enhance the interaction between the holes and the terrain. He widened several fairways, most notably the fourth, to incorporate topographical features that used to sit on the sidelines of the playing corridors. On the ninth hole, he recontoured the landing zone for tee shots so that an upslope now holds up balls played to the safer left side, whereas a channel on the right allows more aggressive drives to take a few hops toward the green. This use of a rising contour to serve as a “bunker” is completely in keeping with Lawrence’s original concept for the course.

As wise as Zinkand and the club were to preserve and enhance Desert Forest’s fairways, they were even wiser, I would argue, to take a different approach to the greens.

Most of Lawrence’s greens were shaped roughly like an upside-down pear, with defined areas for pins back left, back right, and front center. “They were really repetitive,” Zinkand said. “So repetitive that it took away from the character everywhere else around the course, including on the really lovely fairways.” In addition, the greens had become less functional over the years. Their rudimentary push-up cores no longer drained effectively, and their severe tilts, designed for the much slower green speeds of the 1960s, accommodated too few pin positions.

Zinkand’s brief, therefore, was to modernize the functionality of Desert Forest’s greens while giving them more character and variety. He did this by creating relatively level pinnable sections separated by an array of sharp, unpredictable contours, including variations on the type of “roll” or “muffin” that he no doubt learned during his time with Coore & Crenshaw. Since part of Zinkand’s inspiration for these forms was the chaotic undulations of Desert Forest’s fairways, the new greens by no means seem alienated from the rest of the course. If anything, they feel more connected.

To complete the green complexes, Zinkand gave the green-side bunkers a naturalized—though not ostentatiously rugged—aesthetic, a look that fits well with both the reshaped putting surfaces and the irregular lines of the surrounding desert.

While these changes were bold, they didn’t violate the course’s mid-20th-century sensibility. Desert Forest’s greens are still small, still elevated, and still challenging. They provide some openings for run-up play, but they give an advantage to an aerial attack. In other words, they occupy a middle ground between the Golden Age influences of Zinkand’s training and the midcentury trappings of Lawrence’s design.

Probably the best example of Zinkand’s needle-threading at Desert Forest is his transformation of the 14th hole. He moved the green about 20 yards forward, turning a ridge-to-ridge par 4 into a downhill par 3.5. The new hole is unique at Desert Forest—none of the course’s other par 4s are drivable for stronger players—but it doesn’t seem out of place. That’s because it adheres to the main principles of Lawrence’s work, the most important of which is that topography determines strategy. The hole sits on a left-to-right slope, and those who land their tee shots near the desert on the high-left side earn a good angle for their approach and, if they hit it far enough, a chance of reaching the green.

Many clubs with courses designed in the decades after World War II may feel they must choose between preserving history and offering great architecture. The renovated Desert Forest shows that they can do both.

2 Eggs

Desert Forest’s remarkable land and much-improved design make it essentially peerless in the Scottsdale area’s crowded golf market. My only objection is to the club’s practice of overseeding its Bermuda turf with perennial ryegrass in the winter. The wonderful fairways would play firmer if the club, as it once did, allowed the Bermuda to go dormant in the cold months. Of course, moving away from overseeding would be a tough sell for the club’s members, many of whom are winter residents looking for an emerald-green escape from snowier climes.

Course Tour

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