Scottsdale Silverado Golf Club

(Note: A newer version of this course, TGC@Scottsdale Silverado is now available, and by all accounts is a must-play)

The first impression here is that the course is very flat. If you take your eyes away from the playing surfaces, though, you will see that the exterior elevation around the holes is done with great care, making a very realistic looking rocky terrain. The planting is fairly minimal, and there is an abundance of heavy rough surrounding each hole. It's the default heavy rough, of the brown variety (which makes sense, considering the course was released before texture swapping), so it doesn't create the most appealing look for the course.

As you play the course, you will see that while the course appears flat, there and slopes and mounds around the greens which are all carefully placed in areas where you would prefer to land your approach shot. The result is lots of awkward chips and pitches from off of the green, and a deceptively challenging course.

Most of the holes are nicely designed from a strategy standpoint, and it makes for an enjoyable round. The only negatives I could pull from the experience were the increasingly narrow fairways as you progressed through the back nine, and the par 5 on the front (7th maybe?) where you played from one island to another within a large lake. That hole, while not a bad hole to play, really felt out of place with the rest of the course.

I think this one will have trouble keeping up with some of the newer desert courses with better textures, but it plays well enough to hold a tournament, in my opinion.