DC Ranch Making Golf ‘Fast and Fun’
By Scott Kauffman
The Country Club at DC Ranch, a member-owned private club in Scottsdale, Arizona, is another group of course owners doing their part to help make the game quicker and more enjoyable for golfers of all ages and proficiency levels.
In other words, DC Ranch is the latest golf property to add a new, alternative short course to its mix of golf and country club amenities.
For years, the golf industry has talked about the need to build more short golf layouts and satisfy members/guests struggling to find 4 or 5 hours to play a traditional 18-hole round in what seems to be an ever-increasing time-crunched world. But, while the number is slowly growing, only a few property owners have actually been able to deliver on that call to action.
At DC Ranch, the answer to golfers’ time-starved struggles is a new 9-hole course called The Horseshoe – an ode to the upscale club’s one-time ranching roots where cowboys and cattle ranchers once roamed. Now, members get to meander through a more refined “ranch” layout that features holes ranging from 54 to 104 yards with the same TifEagle Bermudagrass bunker-protected greens as the club’s main 18-hole course recently redesigned by PGA Tour star Tom Lehman and longtime design partner John Fought.
Wendell Pickett of Scottsdale-based land planning and landscape design firm, Greey Pickett, was the lead architect responsible for designing the Horseshoe and helping make golf “fast and fun,” as DC Ranch likes to describe the new 9-hole experience. It’s actually the second unique short course Pickett helped design and build in the golf-saturated Phoenix-Scottsdale market after working on the master-planned community of Wickenburg Ranch with design partner Bill Brownlee.
Like DC Ranch, Wickenburg also features a traditional 18-hole par-71 layout, Big Wick, and a 9-hole par-3 companion course, Li’l Wick, where golfers can play an entertaining round ranging from 663 yards to 1,240 yards in flip flops and relaxed dress code. While DC Ranch might have a little more dress decorum at the Horseshoe, members are having just as much fun playing the course.
“The members are loving it and having so much fun,” says longtime membership and marketing director Melanie Halpert. “We have our professionals playing it. Or members with very low handicaps who are just going out there playing with their wives or playing with their kids and just having a good time. … You see juniors and ladies. … It literally takes them 90 minutes to go around and play. So, it’s very social and a lot of fun.”
DC Ranch member golfers are even “dressing down” on occasion to enjoy their new short course. For example, the club hosted a festive ugly holiday sweater party on the Horseshoe soon after it opened, where everyone “just started on a hole with two clubs and a drink in another hand and had a great time,” Halpert added.
Meanwhile, to further enhance the overall golf experience at DC Ranch, the club added an 8,500-square-foot practice putting green at the Practice Park along with more tee spaces and a larger short-game area with two chipping greens and greenside bunkers. Additionally, the club recently added Gold Tees on its main 18-hole course that play to a yardage of 3,969 yards – 1,100 yards shorter than the red tees and approximately 3,000 yards shorter than the black tees.
All of these new golf amenities are on top of $8.5 million in newly added clubhouse and sports/lifestyle-related amenities last year, including a new indoor-outdoor casual dining concept, two kid’s clubhouses, a new resort pool and two large event lawns.
In many respects, the wealth of new amenities at DC Ranch is a reflection of what has become one of the most diverse private club memberships in a city loaded with private clubs that typically cater to retirees or Baby Boomers close to retiring. Now, thanks in part to DC Ranch’s excellent location in the heart of Scottsdale’s schools and shopping districts minutes from the city’s main highway artery, the club is increasingly multi-generational in makeup with some 650 youth members under the age of 24 (average age is 12).
“It used to be the parents for example would be in their 60s, move out to North Scottsdale and they’re going to retire,” says Halpert, who started working for DC Ranch two years after it opened in 2000. “But now we’re seeing the young family moving out here and it’s the parents following.
“I have members who I work with on a daily basis who joined DC Ranch specifically because they know their kids and grandchildren are going to feel comfortable here. There’s something for every generation. And this 9-hole course is perfect for our members.”
Indeed, “golf will always be king” at DC Ranch, according to Halpert. Turns out, the club now has a new prince on the premises.
Scott Kauffman is a golf business writer and the managing director of Aloha Media Group.
successful food truck program, with five events annually. What’s also taking hold at this daily-fee course is a wine club, which was started in August of last year and already has a membership of 50. The wine club dinners, for which members pay a fee, feature wine from all over the world. A five-course Italian dinner, for example, might include five different wines. The dinners also include wine education sessions.
“Our idea was to encourage golfers to play and then enjoy a dining experience other than what usually draws them here,” says Jack Swisher, PGA, general manager of Los Robles. “Not one wine club member has cancelled.”
There is a $39 quarterly fee to join the wine club, which includes two bottles of wine each quarter, retrieved at “pick-up parties” held on a Sunday afternoon. Everyone gets the same two bottles, but optional purchases of other wines are available at the parties, held at The Gardens of Los Robles, an outdoor event facility built in 2013. There are appetizers and a tasting of six wines. A wine distributor provides two pourers to serve the samples and answer questions. Wine club members receive 15 percent off the retail price of each bottle purchased. Los Robles gets a cut of all proceeds.
“We would like to get 100 or even 200 members in our wine club,” Swisher says.
Five-course beer dinners, open to the public, also are held at Los Robles periodically. The themed menus depend on the local brewery being featured.
“Beer dinners drive a different clientele to our facility,” says Swisher. “We are attracting new customers to Los Robles in a variety of ways.”
Sally J. Sportsman is an Orlando, Florida-based freelance golf writer.