AZ Golf Guides

GREATER PHOENIX/SCOTTSDALE & CENTRAL AZ

Trilogy Golf Club at Vistancia

PEORIA

In northwest Phoenix, Shea Homes and Sunbelt Holdings' 7,100-acre golf community is taking shape, and the Trilogy Golf Club at Vistancia continues to draw rave reviews as the anchor amenity.

In his plans for the Trilogy golf course, designer Gary Panks took his cue from the tall fescue grasses that wave across Southern Arizona's high plains. He blended three native grasses--weeping love grass, blue grama, and sand drop--in a wispy landscape framing the golf course. And this setting will be even more inviting over time as scores of cottonwood and sycamore trees grow to maturity.

However beautiful they may be, the "amber waves of grain" serve as the predominant rub at Vistancia. In play after the second cut of rough, the natural grasses may be well maintained, but they can make play as excruciating as any open championship. They make a misfire off the fairway only slightly more playable than a ball in water. The difference here is golfers at least have the option of marching in to try to find the ball, and then trying to hit it if they do.

Getting down to business on the first four holes, the course opens with a graceful 426-yard par 4 to a gently elevated green, followed by a lengthy par 3 with water to the left and behind the green. An expansive arroyo divides the fairway before the green on Number 3, which poses the first significant bite on this layout.

The front nine features holes of moderate lengths that serve as an extended warmup before making the turn.

Trilogy really bares its teeth on the back nine, where three of the par 4s stretch over 450 yards from the tips. From the elevated markers at Number 10, a well-struck drive should catch some hang time. This helps muster confidence as the back nine begins to reveal its challenges.

Characteristic of a Panks design, the greens are large, but with plenty of movement through gentle tiers and undulations, allowing some very testy pin placements in tournament competition. Every player will find that hitting onto the green is not a final guarantee--putting proves integral in achieving a decent score on this course.

Panks builds holes in sequences where the subtlest challenges on one contrast with those staring down any challenger on the TRILOGY GOLF CLUB AT VISTANCIA next. Water comes into play on the left and behind the green at the 14th hole, but the deep collection in front makes this 564-yard par 5 deceptively difficult. Number 15 is a risk/reward 327-yard par 4. A stretch of bunkers situated diagonally across the fairway tricks long hitters into thinking the green is the target. Panks made the view from the tee intentionally intimidating and the risks obvious for any daring strategy. But he also laid the safe play in full view. Respite comes on the next hole. Free of bunkers, the challenge becomes simply keeping the ball in play down the fairway.

The par-3 Number 17 over water is an eyeful. In the short distance, areas of raw dunes, scattered grasses, and transitional bunkering contrast sharply with the sculpted bunkers and green complex. This simple transition eases guests from the desert back into the oasis, where a creek lined with tall palms lies just to the right of Number 18 and the clubhouse and Verde Grill come into view.

DAVID HUBBARD