Front Nine | Oasis
An Arizona Golf Life
BY JOE PASSOV
To quote the inimitable Francis Albert Sinatra, “When I was 17, it was a very good year.” At that age I attended my first Phoenix Open, a rainy affair at Phoenix Country Club that lasted only 54 holes, with Ben Crenshaw crowned champion. My parents, brother, two sisters and I had left behind the frigid winters of Cleveland, Ohio, six months prior for a new life in the desert Southwest. We were mostly tennis players. Little did I know the outsized role Arizona golf would play in my family’s fortunes over the next five decades. The first round in my adopted state occurred in October 1978. The venue, Orange Tree Golf Club, was so close to our Scottsdale home we could hear “Now on the first tee” announcements from our backyard. My sister Lori and I played the back nine on an autumn Sunday, and I wrote a postcard to my grandfather, Papa Dan back in Ohio, that gushed over the mountain backdrops. It was the beginning of me writing — and gushing — about Arizona golf. I later played regularly with Papa Dan, including at Orange Tree, where he took lessons well into his 80s. “I’m not getting off my right side,” he would fret. But then he would recall his doctor telling him for perspective, “Be happy you’re still looking down at the grass and not up at it.” Dan’s oldest son, Edward, accompanied him — and me — on many occasions. “Eddie” as he was known, was my dad — and easily my best buddy on any buddies trip. Nobody I knew loved golf more than my dad. Eddie hit his final shot in November 2016. He had just found a bunker at Sedona Golf Resort’s ninth hole and before he could play his recovery shot, his heart gave out. By then, Pop was a part-time starter and ranger at the course, and in the aftermath my family and I (including
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