Arizona Biltmore Golf Club: Links Course

The Links Course at Arizona Biltmore Golf Club is the facility's second 18, opened in 1979 and designed by Bill Johnston as a companion to William P. Bell's 1928 Adobe Course. Routed across desert ravines with the Phoenix Mountain Preserve as a backdrop, the par-71 layout was renovated in 1992 by Forrest Richardson and Jack Snyder.

The golf operation at the Arizona Biltmore traces back to 1928, when chewing-gum magnate William Wrigley Jr., whose family owned the resort, hired architect William P. Bell to build what became the Adobe Course. Bell's 18 was among the first golf courses in Phoenix, and for half a century it served as the resort's only course while the Biltmore itself, the Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired hotel that opened in 1929, grew into a year-round retreat for Phoenix visitors.

By the late 1970s demand at the resort had outgrown a single course. The ownership commissioned Bill Johnston, the longtime Arizona Biltmore head professional who had become an active local golf course architect, to design a second 18 on a parcel along 24th Street adjoining the Adobe property. Johnston's Links Course opened in 1979 and takes its name from its more open, exposed character compared with the tree-lined Adobe, using the natural desert ravines that cross the site and several small lakes to shape the routing.

With the Phoenix Mountain Preserve visible to the north, the course plays to a par of 71 and roughly 6,300 yards from the back tees. In 1992 the resort brought in Forrest Richardson and Jack Snyder to update the Links. Richardson, based in Phoenix, and Snyder, a senior Arizona architect who had worked on many of the state's mid-century courses, reshaped bunkers, rebuilt greens, and rerouted a small number of holes, all while preserving Johnston's corridors.

Their renovation established the modern playing character of the course and has remained the governing design layer since. The Links has continued to operate alongside the Adobe as the 36-hole Arizona Biltmore Golf Club. The Adobe was closed in late 2022 for a ground-up rebuild under Tom Lehman's design firm and reopened in November 2023 as the Estates Course, but the Links Course has kept its Johnston routing and Richardson-Snyder refinements intact, making it the older of the resort's two current layouts by original opening year.