8 • GCU TODAY
1
It’s a win, first and
foremost, for golfers.
Anyone who played Maryvale will barely
recognize it. The only things that remain from
the old course are the trees (and not all of them
— some were removed to widen fairways) and
the rough. Every green was rebuilt and every
bunker is new.
“It was beaten to a pulp,” said architect John
Fought, a former PGA Tour player who has done
65 projects over 26 years in the golf course design
business. “People forget that golf courses have an
infrastructure that needs to be updated.
“You go into a restaurant and the chairs are
broken or the rug needs to be replaced, you notice
it. Golf courses are the same way.”
GCU Golf Course has five sets of tees on every
hole, fromway up for the short hitters to way
back for the big bombers, and can be played at
5,074 yards or stretched to 7,238 — 600 yards
longer than it was before. Par was changed from
72 to 71 by turning the 10th hole, previously a
par-5, into a long par-4.
“We tried to make it challenging but not make
it too hard,” said Mueller’s son Jesse, a former
pro who is the course’s director of golf and also
the University’s assistant men’s golf coach. “The
longer the hole, the bigger the green.”
2
It’s a win for golfers’
budgets.
Like the new Grand Canyon University Hotel,
the golf course will be affordable. For Phoenix
residents and GCU employees, the greens fee will
be $35 during the week and $45 on weekends
and holidays. The cost of playing a championship
course typically runs into triple digits.
3
It’s a win for Valley
golfers who want a
different playing experience.
Those $100-plus rounds at Arizona courses
also typically come on layouts that require
shots over and around the don’t-go-in-there
desert brush. That means more lost balls, more
frustration and longer rounds. And many top
courses force golfers to take a motorized cart
because of the long distances between greens
and tees — or simply because they make extra
money from cart rentals.
“We wanted a traditional course that could
be walked, could be enjoyed by all levels of
players and could be played in a reasonable
amount of time,” Brian Mueller said. “There’s
no desert. There’s no cactus. There’s no place
where your ball can get lost. If you hit it in the
trees, you find it and you keep playing.”
GCU Golf Course is golfer-friendly in another
way: The “trouble” (out of bounds, water
hazards) is rare and is mainly on the left, an
important factor considering that 90 percent of
golfers spin the ball from left to right. No matter
how you slice it, this speeds up play.
And once they get their ball on the greens,
they’ll putt on the same Champions Bermuda
turf found at Phoenix Country Club. Navratil’s
reaction said it all: “Boy, was that a nice-
looking piece of carpet.”
4
It’s a win for
property values
around the course.
Numerous organizations such as the National
Association of Realtors and the Appraisal
Institute agree that living on a thriving golf
course is right up there with a good school
system for having a positive effect on home
values. Conversely, living on a decaying or
recently shuttered course can drag down values.
5
It’s a win for GCU’s
partnership with
Habitat for Humanity.
The Canyon Corridor project, in which the
University has pledged $700,000 to help Habitat
for Humanity renovate up to 700 local homes,
has been expanded to include 50 homes in the
neighborhood around the golf course. With
students and staff providing the sweat equity,
the number of remodeled homes in the area
immediately surrounding the campus was
approaching 100 heading into December, and now
the scope will be expanded west by three miles.
6
It’s a win for GCU’s
golf course
management program.
The students in the Colangelo College of
Business’ golf course management program,
which began in August, will get a unique
experience: They’ll be there for the actual
opening of a golf course. In addition, their golf lab
class will be held at the course’s 10,000-square-
foot, two-story clubhouse. “Having our own
golf course, operated by GCU and our students,
makes this a one-of-a-kind program,” said Dr.
Randy Gibb, the CCOB dean.
7
It’s a win for
GCU’s hospitality
management program.
Students in the hospitality management
program, who have been getting on-the-job
experience as the staff of the new Grand
Canyon University Hotel, also will have a big
hand in the golf course — they’ll make up
most of the staff in the clubhouse restaurant,
which will feature 30 menu items at reasonable
prices. There will be the classics, such as
burgers and a pastrami sandwich, and plenty of
salads and other low-carb options.
8
It’s a win for people who
want a good customer
experience but don’t want to
pay a fortune for it.
The enthusiasm of all those purple-shirted
student workers is contagious. “I think
people like being around college kids,” Brian
Mueller said. “We’re going to work hard on the
customer service element. We want the people
to feel like it’s their club.”
Said Jesse Mueller, “We’re getting rid of that
‘municipal’ feeling most people have when they
Architect John Fought took a course that was,
in his words, “beaten to a pulp” and designed a
nicely contoured layout where the GCUflags can
proudlywave.
