Nick Jervis, We-Ko-Pa pro, avoids golf danger with great shots. Photo by Harrison Shiels
Golf…a dangerous sport? The NFL’s big, brutish, bouncing bodies…and the bumpers of race cars… have athletes facing necessary roughness and literally driving to survive. But steering a drive onto a fairway or bump-and-running a golf ball is not lethal, is it?
Beware, boredom, because excitement lurks between every tee and green during desert golf rounds in Scottsdale, Arizona’s deep density of courses. Nick Jervis is an assistant golf professional at We-Ko-Pa Golf Club’s two Sonoran Desert tracks, including the Bill Coore/Ben Crenshaw-designed Saguaro – Arizona’s top-rated public course. He explained that a “saguaro” is a benign grandfatherly cactus that can grow to over 60-feet tall and live up to 250 years.
But We-Ko-Pa’s other course, “Cholla,” is named for a desert plant that can attack players. “It is known as ‘jumping cholla’ because if you get near them, their sharp, super-small barbs will detach and get into your skin. When you pull away from them in pain, you pull the cactus with you.”
I told Jervis my single experience with jumping cholla led to limping off a golf course with a very bloody sock. “I have pulled cholla barbs from a player’s head during a round,” he countered. He also helped save a golfer who had been bitten by a rattlesnake. “We hurried him off the course and, via helicopter, to exactly where he needed to be.”
I asked Jervis for advice on how to avoid an airlift? “Rattlesnakes come out of their burrows in March and April. If you don’t go looking for them, you’ll be okay. And a rattlesnake will let you know they are nearby when you hear the sound.”
The Phoenician’s Veranda. Photo by Harrison Shiels
The roadrunners I saw at spectacularly scenic We-Ko-Pa didn’t scare me, but should I be careful of coyotes? “You don’t want to go near them, but they are more afraid of you than you are of them. They hang out, do their own thing, and can be friendly. There is a halfway house grill on the Saguaro course where a female coyote will come up to guests on the 10th tee because she learned some people will feed her,” said Jervis. He also advised against feeding javalinas.
“They are worth avoiding because they can be very mean. A javalina looks like a pig, and get as big as 50 lbs., but is in the rodent family. If you see one, there are typically 20 around because they travel in herds. They can’t see anything, so you could walk right up to them and they would not know it. But if there is a piglet around…well, look, everything is out to get you here in the desert.”
Less dramatic, but no less dangerous, are the inevitable golf cart accidents when golfers at the wheel “enjoy themselves too much” or get distracted by the panorama of the four mountain peaks visible from anywhere on the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation’s We-Ko-Pa’s courses. “They usually flip an overturned cart back up, but when they drive in, we can see the cart roof is a little awry or maybe the tires are pointed at each other,” revealed Jervis.
TPC Scottsdale’s famed stadium hole. Photo by Harrison Shiels
Arizona’s unabashed bash is the PGA Tour event held annually at TPC Scottsdale course. The big-money tournament draws the largest, most “enthusiastic” crowds of any golf event on the planet – many of them sipping and swigging while seated at the Tom Weiskopf/Jay Morrish-designed Stadium course’s 16th hole: a par-three surrounded by bleachers built for at least 20,000 fans.
Resort players who tee it up at TPC between September and early February enjoy the excitement and fantasy of the stadium experience while the bleachers are built for the likes of pro golf stars Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele, Bryson DeChambeau, and Rory McIlroy. Golf fans recall the shared mayhem of Tiger Woods making a hole-in-one there in 1997; and the big boulder spectators moved out of his swing path two years later. But curiously Wood never won the PGA Tour event now dubbed “the greatest show on grass” at Scottsdale.
Troon North Golf Club is fraught with challenge. Photo by Harrison Shiels
Another dangerous thing about a golf trip to Scottsdale would be not playing Troon North Golf Club’s two courses – Monument and Pinnacle – at the base of Pinnacle Peak. They’re two of the Weiskopf-designed (the Troon name is in homage to the Scottish club where Tom won the British Open) original tracks to put the area on the golf rankings map.
Another “OG” is The Phoenician Golf Club, a classic which evolves by embracing a modern twist of “Shark Experience” technology on its power carts featuring on-course streaming tips from Greg Norman, live sports, and music.
We-Ko-Pa; TPC Scottsdale; and The Phoenician Golf each offer luxury lodging. Visit ExperienceScottsdale.com
Contact Michael Patrick Shiels at MShiels@aol.com His new book: Travel Tattler – Not So Torrid Tales, may be purchased via Amazon.com Hear his radio talk show on WJIM AM 1240 in Lansing weekdays from 9 am – noon.
