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Douglas Trudeau , Assoc. Broker
Prudential Foothills Real Estate
64 N. Harrison Road, Suite 160
Tucson , AZ 85748
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El Rio Golf Course Rich In History

On Sunday my wife told me no Open Houses today, go play golf with your son and daughter-in-law. How many golfers envy me for such a wonderful wife? So we set out to El Rio Golf Course. Our son played his best game ever, our daughter-in-law played better than I’ve seen her play as well, and I had my worse score in 3 years. Plan a fade, and straight into the trees, plan straight and fade into the next fairway. Go figure. 75 yards out and on for a one putt. 20 yards out and over the green into the sand. Lesson learned, don’t lay off for a month and a half then go out to play without even hitting the driving range. Saturday morning practices I’ll see you this weekend. All said, two out of three for the day wasn’t bad. We managed to finish in 3 hours and 21 minutes.

Rumor has it that Tucson’s first grass golf course was offered to the public in 1929 as the El Rio Country Club. The official year of the El Rio Country Club was 1934. Operated ad a Country Club until 1968. El Rio Golf Course was home to the first Tucson Open in 1945, ending in as host for a national tournament in 1962. El Rio is a course rich with history.

The Tucson Open ended in Tucson as the Chrysler Tucson Open in 2006, I remember being there. Replaced by the Accenture Championship Match Play in 2007. I was there too.

A not so proud moment for the course was when actor Jamie Farr from MASH had the misfortune in the early 1980’s of his car being burglarized while playing at El Rio. Jamie, next time you come back to Tucson, we’ll take my truck and the round is on me. I wonder how many other actors played their over the years. Especially with Old Tucson Studios not far away.

With a regular slope of 119, a rating of 68.50 and a distance of 6,013 this is a fun course for players of any level. Forgiving on most of the holes with a few challenges to make it fun. It is a good course for high handicappers to practice different aspects of their game. The Junior tees make it fun to bring the kids.

El Rio Golf Course is the Tucson home for the PGA’s First Tee. The driving range was converted to a practice area for kids of all ages to learn golf. On days that it is open to the public bring your quarters. Its the only driving range I know of that still uses quarters instead of dollar bills to get practice balls. In the future First Tee will have their own building on the edges of the driving range.

Imagine teeing up where Ben Hogan, Babe Zaharias, Sam Snead, Byron Nelson, Gary Player, and even Bing Crosby once played. I wonder what Ben Hogan would think of my SC3 Driver, Apex irons, or Baby Ben putter. There is something about teeing up on a course the Master played with clubs bearing his name. So come out, have fun on Tucson’s oldest course and imagine what it was like years ago. Envision playing along side some of the greats.

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 20th, 2007 at 7:51 pm and is filed under Tucson Golf Courses. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.