Scottsdale National Golf Club - The Bad Little Nine

Try as architects might, even though they have undoubtedly raised the average quality of golf courses, they have had relatively little luck in producing truly unique golf in the last quarter-century. So Jackson Kahn Design deserve a huge round of applause for their work at this quasi-absurdist performance piece of a 9-hole par-3 course, as does their patron, PXG founder Bob Parsons, who let them go hog-wild and break just about every rule of design.

Every hole here is a showpiece, but the 5th and 6th raise golf design into the realm of land sculpture, with all sorts of ridges, bumps and ripples of turf that are simply not seen anywhere else. It is almost a lunar landscape in the quiet desert northeast of Phoenix. Despite its diminutive size, it is in some ways the centerpiece of Scottsdale National, which is one of golf’s most over-the-top retreats.