It was 20 years ago this month that architect Jack Nicklaus and developer Lyle Anderson unveiled the Renegade Course at Desert Mountain, the first of six Nicklaus-designed layouts that ultimately defined the upscale northeast Scottsdale golf community.
I remember what the critics said at the time: A golf course like Renegade, which featured two flags/pins/cups on each and every hole, was too radical and doomed to be a bust. And, oh, by the way, nobody is going to pay $150,000 to $275,000 for a golf course lot that is 45 minutes from downtown Phoenix even if two free memberships are part of the deal!
Today, Desert Mountain is 98 percent sold out with the remaining home sites being offered at an average price of $2 million each. The membership fee is now a staggering $325,000 (included with the price of the lot), meaning no club in the Southwest is more elite.
In retrospect, Desert Mountain was a spectacular gamble by Anderson that involved 8,000 acres of High Sonoran desert. Incredibly, he purchased the land for $45 million, or about the average sum of one month’s real-estate sales at Desert Mountain over the past 20 years.
And what ever happened to Renegade? True to its name, Renegade remains the only course like it in this U.S. And the members love it, especially when Golf Digest honors it as the most difficult golf course in Arizona -- 13 th overall in the country – as it recently did.
According to Anderson, he came up with the two pins/flags/cups concept for Renegade while watching the 1984 British Open at St. Andrews, where several holes share common greens. But he had trouble selling the idea to Nicklaus despite the Golden Bear’s two British Open wins at St. Andrews.
A couple of months later, after Nicklaus had time to digest some of Anderson’s other “crazy ideas’’ for Desert Mountain, which included naming the courses Renegade, Cochise, Geronimo, Chiricahua, Apache and Outlaw, the Bear changed his mind. Well, kind of.
“If it turns out that people like it, it’s my idea,’’ Nicklaus quipped about Renegade’s double vision. “If they don’t like it, it’ll be your idea.’’
Seriously, that is how good friends treat each other, and Anderson and Nicklaus are almost like family after building six more courses together in Arizona, New Mexico and Hawaii at four other golf communities, including Desert Highlands Golf Club in Scottsdale and Superstition Mountain Golf and Country Club in Gold Canyon.
But when you consider the odds against putting together a golf property the size of Desert Mountain, it has to be their greatest achievement. And there was plenty of pain along with the gain, as problems like a tanking real estate market in the late1980s and water issues with the neighboring town of Carefree – to name a few – had to be resolved along the way.
Even maintaining ownership was a challenge, as Anderson needed to bring in outside partners like Mobil Oil (1989-96) and the current proprietor, Crescent Real Estate (1997 to present), to keep the project rolling.
Shoot, just buying that much property in the very beginning was a monumental reach. Back in ’84 the only roads that led to Desert Mountain were dirt, and the previous owners had told Anderson that then-Carefree Ranch would not make a good golf property. As proof, they pointed to a little-used, nine-hole course that existed there at the time called the Gambel Links.
But Anderson, who had graduated with an engineering degree from the University of Washington, was on his way to establishing himself as the Valley’s No. 1 risk-taker. And finally, after asking numerous real estate entities repeatedly to be shown the property, he set out on his own to hike Desert Mountain. Talk about risk-reward!
“I knew we had stumbled onto something big even back then,’’ he said upon first seeing the land up close and personal. “But I never knew it would be this enormous.’’
The master plan called for three golf courses, 6,000 home sites and five hotels. In the end, the golf doubled, the home sites were cut by more than half, and there never was a hotel because Anderson believed he had created the perfect lifestyle without them.
“There was lots of adrenaline flowing, and lots of excitement,’’ he said of the early years. “The best memories I have are of our employees and the fun we had doing this. We were a very close group.’’
Indeed, it was more than just Anderson and Nicklaus who built “the Mountain.’’ The main cast of characters included Phil Schneider, who was Anderson’s right-hand man and legal confidant; Dick Hyland, the “original employee’’ in charge of every course; Dick Frye, who oversaw the course construction and engineering; Virgil Robinson and Shawn Emerson, who had the never-ending task of producing award-winning course conditions; Jim Flick, the well-respected golf instructor who became the club’s gentle ambassador; and Debbie Rittenhouse and Mark Kizziar, who turned The Tradition into a major championship on the then-Senior Tour.
Anderson was especially fond of The Tradition, which became a player/fan favorite on the 50-and-over circuit for 12 glorious years.
“(The Tradition) was really paramount to promoting the whole Scottsdale area as a second-home market and a wonderful place to retire and live,’’ he said. “I think people fell in love with the desert all over the country . . . they were fascinated – and that certainly helped our market.’’
Yes, Desert Mountain might just be “the world’s best golf community,” as it was dubbed by the Robb Report. But who would have guessed it 20 years ago other than Lyle Anderson?
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