Tee time

San Marcos Golf Course in 1913.

Golf is so not my thing, but Phin was ecstatic to discover he was in Arizona and immediately set off to find a green.


Golfers have long flocked to Arizona and its sunny skies.  

Perhaps the first golf course was built in 1899 Arizona by a group that later would become the Phoenix Country Club. Their course was a nine-hole layout of dirt fairways and sand "greens" located near what is now Central Avenue and Roosevelt Street.

(Coincidentally, Trinity Episcopal Church needed larger facilities and purchased a parcel of land on Central Avenue and Roosevelt Street. The new site was so far north of Phoenix's business section that it was called "The Episcopal Folly." Building for what is now Trinity Episcopal Cathedral began in 1915. Arizona bishops always had a free Country Club membership until it was refused by Bishop Joseph Harte in 1962 because the Club would not admit African Americans.)

When the San Marcos Hotel opened in 1913 in present-day Chandler it also opened the nine-hole San Marcos Golf Course. One year later nine more holes were added. 

The original course was made of oiled sand with cottonseed meal greens. In 1914, the entire course was planted to rye grass, giving it the distinction of being the first turf course in the entire state of Arizona.

Arizona now has at least 421 golf courses to choose from, so Phin will have plenty of choices.

Once he gets some clubs.