Native Links: A new era of native-owned courses

Supported by fee-to-trust land acquisition programmes, ongoing successful advocacy, and revenues from gaming, many Native American tribes have built museums, archives, government centres and, surprise, golf courses. And these are not just run-of-the mill munis. We are talking high-end golf resorts designed and built by some of the more notable names in design.

Two of the finest Native-owned tracks in the heart of both golf and Indian Country – Talking Stick in Scottsdale, Arizona, and We Ko Pa in Fort McDowell, Arizona – were designed by Coore & Crenshaw. Do these rank among the best of their course design work?

“People ask us all the time,” says Bill Coore. “There is no answer. We’ve had such wonderful opportunities. But then I think about it. Talking Stick had the least potential of any site we’ve worked on. It was basically a sand parking lot. Zero qualities for golf, and yes, there are now two courses. When you look at that, well, if you consider it that way, when you start with zero potential and then, that garners consideration.”

When I visited Talking Stick recently, the parking lot was full of folks seeking the mecca of golf, Scottsdale. But these were not only travellers and tourists. The club’s general manager Roy Smith notes that the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, which owns Talking Stick, has a league night for Native golfers that continues to grow. “We usually have between 60 and 100 community members each season,” he says.

Talking Stick opened in 1997, which marks the year and decade when many tribes began to get into the industry, though any discussion could begin with a Robert Trent Jones Jr design at Cochiti Pueblo in 1981. “When we were preparing to build Cochiti,” Jones recalls, “the tribe held a ritual, asking the great spirit if my spirit was right to design and build a golf course there. That was my interview.”

Jones’ company’s motto, ‘Of the Earth – For the Spirit’, seems prescient. “Heaven with a zip code” is the motto of Cochiti, as he recalls with a smile in his voice.

“Golf course design is an artform,” says Jones. “I mean, there are the five elements of defence: length, width, whether it’s tree-lined or has rough, hazards and the greens. All those are in a structural sense. My drawings have arrows, and I am showing the shape of how I want them to drain. But I don’t use a formulaic approach. For me, real people who are the great designers see a sequence of holes: 18 little rhythms, 18 compositions that hear the tempo of the land. And real golf is continuous – not a return to the clubhouse. And you’re in it. You’re playing like you’re playing an instrument. You’re interacting with the routing. Good design is both a composition and collaboration, like an orchestra that is playing the land.”

While Cochiti was one of the first, there are now more than 70 native-owned golf courses, many built alongside museums and libraries and casinos, all made possible, in part, by The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA), passed by the US Congress in 1988. This was the earthquake, the watershed in the history of policymaking directed towards reservation-resident American Indians. Indian gaming has allowed marked improvements in several important dimensions of reservation life and the joys and suffering of golf is part of that.

Among the most successful of these endeavours is the Mashantucket Pequot Reservation (MPTN), which, at the end of 2017, employed 9,702 people. Another tribal enterprise, the Rees Jones-designed Lake of Isles Golf Courses, employs 6,772.

“Anything I can do to help the tribes, I’m willing to do,” says Rees Jones, noting that Dacotah Ridge and Lake of Isles are two of his designs that are key, economically, for the tribes.

One economic impact study, commissioned by the American Golf Industry Coalition and conducted by the National Golf Foundation in 2022, notes that in addition to the almost $102 billion in direct impact on the US economy, golf’s indirect and secondary impacts bring that total to over $226 billion. The game of golf enables over 1.65 million jobs, including more than one million directly tied to the industry.

What might not be a surprise is that with high-end golf facilities, a new generation of golfers has begun to emerge among Native American communities. And among this new generation, after a number of winning seasons at Stanford and on the PGA Tour, Notah Begay lll has, among other concerns, begun to focus on course design. He has worked with many in the industry, notably with Jeffrey Brauer in the layout at Firekeeper, in Mayetta, Kansas. (The Championship tees at Firekeeper are called ‘The Notah Tees’.)

“My message to young kids: you don’t have to choose one or the other,” says Begay lll. “You can still maintain your culture and identity as American Indian – your practices, your beliefs, your faith – and be successful in the modern business world. It’s not a one-or-the-other choice.” Many of those youngsters are now competing at high levels and securing scholarships for higher education. One protégé of NB3 Elite golf program, Maddison Long, was recently named New Mexico’s high school player of the year and this September is starting at the University of Maryland on a scholarship for golf.

Not to be outdone, Begay recently qualified for the US Senior Open, so his playing days are not behind him!

In all, Native council leaders and advocates say they are attracted to golf courses because they bring added revenue and jobs without devastating the land. From Cochiti in 1981, to more recent designs like Firekeeper, which is planning an expansion by adding a short course designed by Christine Fraser, golf has – in a number of ways – brought Native Americans back to their own land. It may not be corn and buffalo, but sustenance from a game might be a fair alternative.

Mark Wagner’s book on Native Americans and golf – Native Links – is now available from Back Nine Press.

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