Designer Notes:

My favorite golf hole is #18 at Stone Canyon Golf Club, our new course in Oro Valley, Ariz. (north of Tucson), that opened in 1999. The property consists of deep canyons lined with beautiful red rock formations covered with Saguaro cacti. The hole is a 490-yard par-four, playing downhill about 80 feet on the tee shot. The view from the tee is as spectacular as any view without an ocean, but we do have the beautiful Catalina Mountain Range across the valley. The hole is framed with a semi-mountain on the left and huge rock formations on the right. The fairway is nearly 100 yards wide at the landing area, but if one wants to shorten the hole, he must thread the needle down the narrow left side between the mountain and a rock outcropping in the middle of the fairway. In the process, one must avoid a fairway bunker tucked into the mountain base on the left. One can also play to the wide portion of the fairway, right of the center rock outcropping. However, from this side the green is blind and the player must hit over a large rock formation. It is a ?pay me now or pay me later? kind of hole.