I played it a couple of times with John Harbottle, back when we worked for Perry Dye. I wrote it up for the original edition of The Confidential Guide, but we might have taken it out of the published version of the book since the course was NLE. Here is my original review:
"I'm not about to go out on a limb and call this a great golf course, but while I spent time working in Phoenix I had the chance to play it about once a week, and I really enjoyed it in spite of its several goofy holes.
To understand "The Ranch" you have to know a little about the history of the development. Roy Dye bought a total of 7000 acres of desert on the eastern edge of Carefree, which was to be the Carefree Ranch development; but he had so overestimated the market that a few years later he sold out to the developers of Desert Highlands, with a grand total of two houses having been built.
With his cash-flow problems quickly becoming apparent, Andy [as the Dyes called him] decided to build the course under the most austere budget imaginable. He cleared only enough ground for tees, fairways and greens [a total of 22 acres on the nine holes, all carpeted in bentgrass], leaving 200 yards of more between the back tee and the start of the fairway on every one of the longer holes; in this regard it was the forerunner of the modern desert layouts. He also moved as little dirt as possible in the playing areas, just smoothing them down to their broader contours before planting them. And then the pump station could only provide enough water capacity for nine holes, so only the back nine was ever in play, even though several holes on the front side were shaped and the irrigation installed at one point.
The result was one of the most natural courses I ever played -- it fit the ground perfectly, which was an undeniable charm. But it was also one of the most severe courses ever, because where the ground didn't make a great natural golf hole it stuck out like a sore thumb, and the architect planted so little grass around the greens that the bold contours of several greens literally shed balls into the desert. The course was also terribly long from the back tees [3,674 yards] [
- my how things change ], because apparently nobody could resist adding another back tee here, and still antoher there; it was only fun if you played mix-and-match from different tees every lap around. There were some really awful holes in the nine, but i will mourn the loss of the 10th, 13th and 18th, three excellent two-shotters.
And you should have seen the beginnings of the front nine! Some of the strangest stuff in the history of golf course architecture was out there: a cactus in the middle of a green, a par-3 with a narrow 3-leaf-clover-shaped green, and a great blind drive at what was to be the 9th hole. No matter how goofy Gambel Golf Links was, I had some very good times playing golf there, and I'm sorry to see it go."
I know I've got some slides of it somewhere in my files ... but I won't have anyone in the office to do anything with them until the new year.