Mother’s Day is Sunday, May 13th! Show mom just how much you love her by taking her out for a beautiful and delicious brunch. Reserve your table for Mother’s Day Brunch at ASU Karsten’s Trophy Room Restaurant.

Executive Chef Andrew Brosten has planned an incredible Mother’s Day Brunch Buffet, including blintzes, crab legs, jumbo shrimp, mahi mahi, beef tenderloin, turkey breast, house-smoked pork loin and much more. Plus, get the day started with bottomless Bellinis or Mimosas ($8) or try a spicy Habanero Bloody Mary ($7).

To see the full menu that Chef Brosten has prepared for you, please Click Here.

Now that we have your mouth watering, it’s time to make your reservation.

Mother’s Day Brunch reservations are now being accepted by calling 480-921-8073. Adults are $35 each and children (10 and under) are $12 each. Hurry, reservations are filling up quickly.

Summer heat and summer savings are right around the corner at ASU Karsten. Pick up an ASU Karsten Champions Club – Summer Pass now and begin receiving discounted rates starting May 1 and lasting through September 23!

The cost is $49 plus tax when you purchase the pass before April 30, and $59 starting May 1. Your benefits include:

• Complimentary round when you join
• $26 daily rate June 1 – September 23
• $43 daily rate May 1 – May 31
• UNLIMITED rounds of golf at the Champions Club / Summer Pass rate
• UNLIMITED accompanied guest rounds at preferred guest rates (up to 3 guests per day)
• 20% discount on all non-sale apparel; 10% discount on all non-sale equipment
• 5-day advance reservations online, 4 days over the phone
• Reduced rates at other participating OB Sports managed facilities including We-Ko-Pa, Longbow, McDowell Mountain Ranch, Palm Valley, Raven Golf Club – Phoenix, Sedona Golf Resort. In LAS VEGAS, you can play Angel Park, Aliante and The Legacy. And, in Orange County, you can enjoy Tijeras Creek.
• Summer Pass fee may be used as a credit towards 2013 Champions Club card

For more information, contact a member of our professional team at (480) 921.8070.

Attention boys and girls ages 8 to 18, you’re invited to attend the 2012 Sun Devil Summer Golf Camp at the ASU Karsten Golf Course and Golf Performance Center. There are three sessions to choose from and prices range from $450 for multi-day camps to $1,100 for 5-day resident camps.

The resident camps include a 4-night stay in ASU campus dormitory, meals, instruction by PGA/LPGA instructors, instruction workbook, instruction DVD, all golf fees, t-shirt, golf balls, hat and final tournament & awards. Group and family discounts are available.

For more information, visit www.sundevilgolfcamp.com.

Salt River Fields in Scottsdale, AZ

With Spring Training games about to begin in the Valley, ASU Karsten Golf Course is offering baseball fans a chance to save on golf greens fees through its “Let’s Play Two” special offer. Baseball fans who present a 2012 Spring Training ticket stub at check-in at ASU Karsten will receive 25% off the posted resort rate. This Let’s Play Two offer is good for up to four players, may not be combined with any other discount and is valid through March 31, 2012.

“March is a great time to get out and enjoy Spring Training and golf in the Valley,” said ASU Karsten Director of Golf Daryl Crawford. “Our Let’s Play Two offer gives fans a chance to enjoy both and save a little money in the process.”

The Let’s Play Two offer is also available at Raven Golf Club Phoenix, an ASU Karsten sister course and also managed by OB Sports.

The ASU Karsten Golf Course is a 7,002-yard, par-70 classic Pete Dye design reminiscent of a Scottish links course. Since opening in 1989, ASU Karsten has attracted the attention of prominent NCAA golf events and coveted tournaments such as the Phoenix Thunderbirds and PING Invitational. Managed by OB Sports, the ASU Karsten Golf Course is also home to the Arizona State University men’s and women’s NCAA golf teams, both multiple national championship winners.

For more information on the ASU Karsten Golf Course, visit them on the web at www.asukarsten.com, or call (480) 921-8070.

Recently, noted golf writer Dan Gleason visited us and played a round of golf at ASU Karsten. We want to thank Dan for sharing his impressions, and we hope you’ll enjoy reading his article about his experience at our golf course.

ASU Karsten: A Delightful Place to Spend a Day
By Dan Gleason

Whenever I play the ASU Karsten Golf Course in the Phoenix suburb of Tempe, I can’t help but wonder what it would be like to be able to go back and be in college again for just one more wild football Saturday night.

When I was a contributing editor for Golf magazine and later for Golf Digest — and while writing for just about every national golf publication that existed (if there was a Golf for Midgets, I probably had something in there) I played hundreds of really good courses.  I never pulled any punches if a course was overpriced or overrated, so that when I said nice things about a course, readers knew they could trust my opinion to be sincere, whether they agreed with me or not.

So when I tell you that Pete Dye’s ASU-Karsten Golf Course is among a handful of my favorite all-time campus golf courses, realize that I am not a gusher, and keep in mind that I have had the pleasure of playing a lot of good college courses. I put the ASU course right up there with Stanford’s beautiful track, with the U of Iowa’s Finkbine (my alma mater), and Jim Colbert’s heralded namesake layout at Kansas State.

This lovely, well groomed course is in a pretty part of town, southeast of downtown Phoenix, handy to the 202 and 101 freeways. The Sun Devil football stadium is in full view, a few blocks west in the backdrop. Since opening in 1989, this has been the proving grounds for the likes of Phil Mickelson and other ASU All-Americans such as Billy Mayfair and Grace Park, and a lot of other fine college players.

For me, there is no one single factor that puts the ASU’s Karsten course into elite company; it’s a combination of things: a great variety in the layout; the excellent conditioning in which I’ve always found the course; and because even though there are some really long, tough par fours, several others are short enough to give up frequent birdies. The birdies are there not just for the single-digit player, but also for the average Joe and Jane. Yes, the course is challenging, but if you use your head and keep your tee shots in play, this course not only won’t bash your brains in, you will also come away with a really enjoyable day on the links.

Another variable is that there is a lot of grass on this course; it’s not what you might expect when you think of a Phoenix area course. That is, it’s not a desert target course inundated with giant cacti and thorny brambles. There are big hardwood trees, and almost wall-to-wall grass, which makes it seem very Midwestern and reminds me of home.

Again, I love the variety of the holes—some short par fours, some long par fours; short par threes and one long par three. Straightway, tight fairways but also plenty of doglegs, so that placement is usually more important than power when it comes to scoring.

Unless you play the “professional” tees, you come right out of the chute with a hole you can birdie with a short or mid-iron second shot, a dogleg hole with a slightly downhill approach shot into a low-lying green. It’s only 301 yards from the middle tees and 340 from the champion tees (the second set). If you can put your approach below the hole and not have a slick downhiller, you can get started with a par or even one up on Old Man Par and have that psychological cushion.

Hole #2 is another short hole that can give up a birdie, as long as the drive doesn’t reach a big, deep fairway bunker. Number 5 is one of those monster par fours, (493, 462, 421 and 363 all the way forward), which is why it is good to come to this hole with a previous birdie in your pocket. The 9^th and 18^th holes both use the same dramatic lake, on the right and left sides of those respective fairways, for a great finish on both sides—fairly long par fours with tough approaches into peninsula greens where the six-letter word “splash” has produced some four-letter expletives.

Other long par fours include the 10^th (498, 478, 440 and 409); 15^th (not as long as the others, but moderately long and with water lurking on the right side approach). But along the way there are some other shorter par fours, and a par five that can be reached in two if you don’t play on tees beyond your abilities. This is one of only two par fives on the course, so par is 70, which is nice for the ego when you tally up the final score. There is one relatively long par three but the rest of them are reasonable length.

No two holes seem quite alike to me, something I’ve noticed in all the Pete Dye courses I’ve played. While Dye is renowned for being contracted to build really tough private courses, this is a very fair course—not a pushover, but one where most players can score well if they are on their games. It’s what golf ought to always be—challenging enough never to bore a player, but always great fun.

A lot of college kids work at the course and the service is really top notch. So is the restaurant food—from snacks to burgers to full meals served indoors or out on the patio.

All in all, from the moment you step out of your car in the parking lot, start to finish, ASU Karsten is an absolutely delightful place to spend a day.

For more information on ASU Karsten Golf Course, visit www.asukarsten.com or call (480) 921-8070

Dan Gleason, a former contributing editor to Golf Digest, is an award-winning, Scottsdale, AZ-based writer and book author. His fiction and non-fiction have appeared in a wide array of national magazines over the years. You can contact “Writer Dan” by email at writerdan1@cox.net or call 520-219-8881.

Proceeds Benefit The 100 Club Of Arizona

 
Join Arizona Sports 620 hosts Dave Burns and John Gambadoro, Burns & Gambo, at the ASU Karsten Golf Course on Wednesday, December 14^th to raise money for The 100 Club of Arizona in their fifth annual Holiday Heroes radio-thon. The event will take place at the ASU Karsten Golf Course between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m., as Burns and Gambo solicit donations, sell amazing sports memorabilia and host a fundraising golf tournament during the 12-hour fundraising marathon.

The mission of the 100 Club of Arizona is to provide financial assistance to families of public safety officers and firefighters who are seriously injured or killed in the line-of-duty, and to provide resources to enhance their safety and welfare.

The Holiday Heroes golf tournament will begin with a noon shotgun start. The event is open to the public. Everyone is encouraged to golf, eat, play and join local athletes and celebrities as Arizona Sports 620 and ASU Karsten help the 100 Club of Arizona raise funds for families of public service officers in need. The Republic Monetary Exchange Golf Ball Drop will take place at 11:45 with one lucky person guaranteed to take home $5,000 in gold.

There are also many exciting on-site activities , such as:

• Ping Gambo! — Take your best shot at Gambo on the ASU Karsten Driving Range as he stands at the hole in a police dog bite suit and helmet! For donations only!
• Holiday Heroes Raffle — Purchase raffle tickets for your chance to win autographed sports memorabilia and golf packages/supplies.
• Police and Fire Displays — Come check out patrol cars, fire trucks, vintage police and fire vehicles, the bomb squad robot, K-9 units in action, and much more! Free to the public, it’s a perfect family activity that everyone will enjoy.

For more information regarding donations, sponsorship opportunities or to play in the event, visit www.holidayheroesaz.com.

The ASU Karsten Golf Course was named one of the Best Campus Courses in the Country by Golfweek Magazine in the September 9, 2011 issue. Golfweek ranked the Top 30 Collegiate Courses and placed ASU Karsten 29th on the list. The Course at Yale in New Haven, Conn. was the top ranked course on the list followed by Taconic Golf Club in Williamstown, Mass. To qualify for Golfweek’s Best Campus Course list, a course must be part of a school’s recreational life in terms of preferential access for students, faculty and alumni.

“We’re thrilled to again be named to Golfweek’s list of Best Campus Courses,” said ASU Karsten Director of Golf Daryl Crawford. “Our staff does an incredible job of caring for this Pete Dye-designed golf course.”

ASU Karsten was one of four Pete Dye-designed courses to appear on the Best Campus Courses list. The other Dye-designed courses to make the list are Pete Dye River Course in Blacksburg, Va. (9th), Radrick Farms Golf Course in Ann Arbor, Mich. (17th), and Birck Boilermaker Complex in West Lafayette, Ind. (18th).

Beginning Wednesday, August 17th, and continuing every Wednesday through August 31, Happy Hour Golf rates will begin at 11 AM. That’s 1/2 off the posted rate of $36!!! We’ll do the math…wait for it…that’s $18 for golf starting at 11 AM. You can’t beat that deal.

Can’t wait until 11 AM to play golf? Here’s another special deal for you. Beginning Monday, August 15th, ASU Karsten will be offering a twosome golf special — $50 plus tax and includes golf, golf car and one bottle of water or Powerade each (must be booked as a twosome). This rate will be available after 8:00 AM and is good Monday – Thursday of each week.

To book your tee time for these two late summer specials, please call the GOLF SHOP at 480-921-8070. We hope to see you here!

ASU Karsten is proud to welcome Tim Mickelson as the new men’s head golf coach at Arizona State University. Tim, we’re proud you’re a Sun Devil. Welcome to the PAC-12, and welcome back to the Valley of the Sun.

Read more about Mickelson’s hiring on the ASU Athletics website.

What do the Rolling Stones, Ludacris, Aretha Franklin and Blood Sweat & Tears have to do with playing better golf? Check out my story “Find Your Groove” in this month’s Golf Infuzion Magazine to find out! Subscribe FREE Today! http://www.golfinfuzion.com/Fi​nd-Your-Groove.news

For more information on coaching with Jeff Ritter visit JeffRitterGolf.com