Stone Canyon

Stone Canyon:  Among existing desert courses The Stone Mountain Club is one of the most beautiful and enchanting, partly due to its rocky boulder infested environment and also for the way Jay Moorish, the architect, routed the course naturally through the forbidding landscape.  The design process began in 1997 when Mr. Moorish was first shown the property.  Indeed it was the character of these boulder laden hills in Oro Valley beneath the Catalina Mountains outside of Tucson that inspired and challenged Mr. Moorish.  He has said that nature guided him, but it is a mystery to me how all the granite boulders pointed the way to this great routing.  The course begins with an open fairway to the 1st with great vistas and gradually works its way up into more intimate spaces in the nooks and crannies of the mountains.  The magnificent vertical Saguaro cactus constantly contrast with the rugged rocks and pristine green fairways always delighting the eye and serving as obstacles to one's strategy to the greens.  The par-3 6th is a picture of beauty enclosed and caressed by water.  At the 10th the player descends back into the valley, obstructed only by water and the beauty of the distant landscape, but this downhill par-5 is one of the best scoring opportunities.  The 11th begins another ascent into the base of the mountains, a journey that concludes with 3 very interesting holes: a long par-3, downhill, a short par-4, followed by a long difficult par-4 that allows rocks and cactus in the fairway and narrows quickly requiring a pin-point drive followed by a strong mid-iron.  Too bad that the Stone Mountain Club is private.  There are many who would relish the opportunity to play this beauty.

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Artists' Golf is a conceptual work of art Copyright 1995 - 2008 by David B. Lewis and all original paintings, drawings and art works are Copyright by David B. Lewis. All rights reserved.  Maps of existing courses are original artistic interpretations and impressions from a variety of sources and are not intended to be accurate renderings or representations of the actual courses.  They indicate my interest and study and are intended purely for the pleasure and information of the viewers and are not for sale or profit.