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 my sister Kathryn — not a golfer!) were comforted by the outpouring of support and generosity from the Sedona staff, led by General Manager Jeremy Hayman, and by all the golfers who had come to call my dad “friend.” A plaque honoring Eddie Passov — with his Rotary Club motto, “Service Above Self” embossed — still resides in a juniper tree on the left side of the ninth fairway.

My sister Lori played junior tournaments and then earned a landscape architecture degree at the University of Arizona. She studied to be a golf course architect, but instead married one, Ken Kavanaugh. They were wed on the Desert Highlands golf course in 1991, with their wedding photos featured in Golf World magazine. She also became an award-winning golf photographer and today works for the First Tee – Tucson and coaches the Sabino High School Girls golf team.

Lori wasn’t the only family member to exchange nuptials on one of the state’s greatest golf courses. On a November afternoon in 2001, I tied the knot with Betsy Ryan at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale. Amid the turfgrass, cacti and mountain setting to the right of Raptor’s 18th hole, a bona fide golf geek moment occurred. Just prior to us exchanging vows, the minister gestured and spoke to how fortunate we were to be gathered at this lovely Grayhawk golf course and I blurted out, “A Tom Fazio design.” Betsy married me anyway.

My mother Lois didn’t share our passion for playing the game, but she singularly encouraged me to pursue writing. Since leaving tennis and the legal field behind in 1991, I have spent the next three-anda-half decades realizing every golf travel writing dream, playing in all 50 states and 35 countries. Before I embarked on that journey, however, I discovered Arizona.

I’ve played 225 different courses in my adopted home state so far, including 29 that are no longer with us. Early on, I dragged my younger brother John or my best friend Brad on dozens of these adventures though pines, palms, saguaros and sagebrush. We always had fun.

My 1991 golf writing debut featured two stories for this very publication, then called the Arizona Golf Journal. The first piece detailed how Jack Nicklaus came from 12 shots back after 36 holes to capture The Tradition at Desert Mountain. The other posed the question, “Is the Senior Tour a Closed Shop?” In the next issue, two course reviews with my byline appeared. I never looked back.

Frank Sinatra closed the song mentioned above with, “But now the days are short. I’m in the autumn of the year.” I’m not a kid anymore. Yet I’m thrilled to have two stories in this issue of Arizona Golf Insider If you’re reading them — and perusing the rest of the magazine — undoubtedly you and I have at least one thing in common: a love for Arizona golf.