Wickenburg Ranch Golf & Social Club bucks national trend

Quality & value create incredible demand

There’s no shortage of bad news about the current state of the golf business; so it is all the more refreshing that Wickenburg Ranch Golf & Social Club, one of the nation’s newest golf courses, is performing better than even the most optimistic projections.

The club, which is located an hour northwest of Phoenix, Arizona, opened earlier this year and has been inundated with requests for tee times. Every available starting time was sold out for the first 30 days, and each time Wickenburg Ranch makes a new day available for tee time reservations, it has sold out in hours. Similarly, a public tournament hosted by a popular Phoenix-based golf radio program sold out in just two days – the fastest sellout in the history of the show.

BlueStar Resort & Golf Management, the operators of Wickenburg Ranch Golf & Social Club on behalf of Phoenix-based M3 Companies, credit the outstanding performance to solid, time-tested business practices – delivering a superior quality experience at an exceptional value.

“Going in, we knew the team at M3 had created an outstanding golf course,” said Kirk Kokoska, Vice President of Golf Operations for BlueStar. “Our strategy was simply to deliver a superior golf experience at the best value possible. “From the feedback we’ve received from our guests and from the incredible demand we are experiencing, our team has hit its marks on both accounts.”

Located a few miles from historic downtown Wickenburg, Arizona, near the intersection of Hwy 93 and SR89, Wickenburg Ranch has been more than seven years in the making, providing the golf course ample time to mature and blossom.

Designed by two passionate stewards of the game, Bill Brownlee of M3 Companies and Wendell Pickett of Greey|Pickett, the course has been carefully groomed and refined to ensure maximum playability, shot values and enjoyment. Its artfully designed holes showcase vistas of Vulture Peak and the Prescott National Forest, each a chapter in a larger story, with varying distances, compass directions, and skill requirements woven into the experience.

Because of the elevation and relatively mild summer temperatures in Wickenburg, the course is able to maintain Bentgrass greens all year round, presenting players with putting surfaces that will impress even the most sophisticated players. In fact, GOLF Magazine’s Joe Passov declared that the course may have “the best greens most public players will ever have the chance to play.”

Though a private club by charter, Wickenburg Ranch Golf & Social Club currently welcomes daily-fee guests and will do so for at least its first few seasons. To preserve the private club-type experience and an enjoyable pace of play, the course limits play to no more than 72 guest rounds per day, and tee times are set up on spacious 12-minute intervals. With the excessive demand and increasing daylight, the club has been considering allowing a few more groups out on the course each day; however the 12-minute intervals between tee times will remain.

Golf rates are – by design –well below competitors of similar quality. In fact, Arizona residents can play for just $85 per player and out-of-state guests for just $95 per player. Plus, for a limited time through an exclusive partnership with Travis Mathew, every guest receives a custom polo shirt and performance pullover valued at nearly $170.


To learn more about membership in Wickenburg Ranch Golf & Social Club, visit wickenburgranch.com, call 480.367.3610 or email info@wickenburgranch.com.