Highlands At Dove Mountain, The

Few places in the American Southwest place golfers quite so dramatically inside a desert landscape as the terrain around Marana, a fast-growing community northwest of Tucson at the base of the Tortolita Mountains. Dove Mountain is one of the region's premier resort and residential developments, and The Highlands course occupies ground where the Sonoran Desert does the decorating — saguaro cacti standing sentinel, rocky outcroppings framing fairways, and the Santa Catalina Mountains filling the horizon in nearly every direction. This is high-desert golf, where elevation changes are real and the air is reliably dry.