TPC Scottsdale Stadium Course: Review and Playing Guide

Par: 71 | Yardage: 7,261 | Designer: Tom Weiskopf / Jay Morrish (1986) | Type: Public (resort priority) | Green Fee: $200–350 | Walking: Cart included (walking permitted off-season)

The TPC Scottsdale Stadium Course is a golf course that exists in two states simultaneously: the loudest venue in professional golf for one week each February, and a quiet desert layout for the other fifty-one.

Tom Weiskopf and Jay Morrish completed the design in 1986, one year before the PGA Tour moved what was then the Phoenix Open to the property. The commission was specific. TPC courses of that era were built to host tournaments, not to exist as pure architectural exercises. Weiskopf and Morrish needed wide fairways for gallery movement, accessible green complexes for television sight lines, and enough strategic interest to separate professionals over four rounds. They delivered on all three counts. The course has hosted the event continuously since 1987, through its various naming iterations (the Phoenix Open, the FBR Open, and now the WM Phoenix Open). Annual attendance routinely exceeds 700,000 spectators across the week, making it the most heavily attended event on the PGA Tour by a considerable margin.

That number shapes public perception of the course in ways that can obscure what the golf actually is. Visitors arrive expecting spectacle. What they find, on a Tuesday morning in March with no grandstands and no crowd, is a well-conditioned desert layout that rewards accuracy and course management over raw power. The shift in register is striking.

The Design

The routing moves through relatively flat Sonoran terrain northeast of central Scottsdale, with the desert scrub and native plantings framing holes without imposing the forced carries that define more aggressive desert designs at places like Troon North Monument or We-Ko-Pa Saguaro. Weiskopf and Morrish kept the forced desert carries minimal. The difficulty lives in placement, not survival. Wide fairways invite aggressive tee shots, but the waste areas flanking those fairways punish anything that drifts ten yards offline. The penalty for missing is not catastrophic in the way that a lost ball in deep desert scrub can be at Quintero or the Boulders. It is, however, consistent. A wayward drive here costs half a stroke, and those half-strokes accumulate.

The par 4s are the backbone of the design. Hole after hole presents a clear decision from the tee: carry more desert to shorten the approach, or play safely to the wide part of the fairway and accept a longer second shot to a well-guarded green. The 15th, a par 5 that bends left around a lake, offers the round's most consequential strategic choice. The hole is reachable in two for longer hitters, but the second shot requires a carry over water to a green that offers very little margin for error on the left side. The risk-reward calculation is genuine. Players who lay up to their preferred wedge distance will make birdie often enough; players who go for the green in two will make eagle or bogey in roughly equal measure. The hole decides tournaments, and it tends to decide friendly matches too.

The 18th provides a strong finish: a par 4 with water guarding the left side of the fairway and running the length of the approach to a green backed by the clubhouse and what remains of the tournament infrastructure. It is a visually imposing closing hole that asks for one more precise drive and one more committed iron shot. During the WM Phoenix Open, the green is surrounded by grandstands and the walk up the fairway carries the full weight of the event. During a Tuesday morning round, the lake still concentrates the mind.

The green complexes throughout are subtler than they appear on first inspection. Surfaces are large enough to hit in regulation with regularity, but pin positions on the shelves and tiers create a second layer of difficulty. Two-putting from the wrong level is a test of pace control, particularly during peak season when the overseeded ryegrass greens run at speeds that would be considered fast at any daily-fee course in the country. Conditioning reflects the PGA Tour pedigree. Bermuda grass fairways are maintained to tournament standards year-round, and the winter overseed creates surfaces that roll firm and true. Bunker sand is consistent throughout. The maintenance standard is, frankly, part of what the green fee purchases.

The 16th

Any review of this course that does not address the 16th hole directly is being evasive. During the WM Phoenix Open, the par-3 16th plays at roughly 163 yards to a green fully enclosed by temporary grandstands seating approximately 20,000 spectators. It is the only completely enclosed hole in professional golf. The noise is intense, the atmosphere closer to a football stadium than a golf course, and the reactions to shots, the roars for aces and the jeers for water balls, have become the tournament's defining content.

During a regular round, the grandstands are gone. What remains is a short par 3, well bunkered, with empty concrete footings and retaining walls visible where the stadium structure stood. It is a strange scene. The hole itself, stripped of its context, is a competent short iron to a green that accepts a variety of shots. It is not architecturally remarkable. The experience of standing on the tee, knowing what happens here every February, and hitting a 9-iron into silence is the memorable part. That contrast, between what the hole is and what it becomes, is genuinely unique in the game.

Playing It

Green fees at the Stadium Course range from approximately $200 to $350 depending on season and time of day. Peak rates apply from January through April, when Scottsdale's weather is at its best and the snowbird population is at full capacity. Summer rates drop meaningfully, though the heat limits comfortable play to early morning rounds. Cart fees are included in the green fee year-round, with walking permitted during the off-season months when temperatures and pace of play allow it.

Booking priority goes to Marriott Bonvoy members and guests of the JW Marriott Scottsdale Camelback Inn, which operates as the resort partner for the TPC Scottsdale facility. Non-resort guests can book tee times, but the window is shorter and prime weekend morning slots in peak season fill quickly. Booking seven to ten days in advance is advisable between January and April. Summer visitors will have no trouble securing a tee time with a day or two of notice.

The practice facility is thorough: a full-length range, a dedicated short game area, and a putting green that reflects course speeds. Golfers arriving from the airport would do well to build in forty-five minutes of warm-up time before the round, particularly if adjusting to the firm, fast conditions that desert golf demands.

The Champions Course, TPC Scottsdale's second layout, provides a less expensive option for golfers who want a second day at the facility without repeating the Stadium routing. It is a solid complement, though it does not carry the same weight.

What the Stadium Course offers, finally, is not the best architectural golf in the Scottsdale corridor. Courses at We-Ko-Pa and Troon North present more interesting design problems. What it offers is a specific kind of occasion. This is the course where the loudest week in professional golf takes place, played in the quiet that follows. For a certain type of golfer, that is exactly the point.