Skehan hails ‘best bargain’ Arizona opportunity

VETERAN golf tour operator Sean Skehan still has a plaque on his office wall from 1975, when he pioneered a golfing trip to Arizona with golf pro David Jones.

Thirty five years later he finds himself promoting a trip to the same venue – for a very good reason.

“This is probably the best bargain I have come across in my golf promotion career,” Skehan believes, so much so that he has added it as a flyer to his glossy World of Golf brochure for 2010.

Skehan’s Killester Travel is organising nine days in Phoenix (November 18-27) at the five-star Marriott Desert Ridge resort just north of Scottsdale (www.jwdesertridgeresort.com) with unlimited golf on its 36-hole complex (B&B basis) for €1,295 plus taxes per person sharing.

“Two years ago we had a trip to Arizona in a hotel nothing like this one, and the cost was €2,200,” explains Sean.

“This opportunity comes about by way of a combination of things – a particularly good air fare from BA, the relative strength of the euro v dollar, and the fact that the trip is in November, which is a down time for this particular resort. We are effectively getting two for the price of one.”

The price includes flights with BA from Dublin, Cork or Shannon to London and onwards to Phoenix.

The resort is 10 minutes hotel shuttle service from the most famous shopping mall in the state, and six miles from downtown Scottsdale.

I can’t personally vouch for the resort, but close friends who know their US golf describe the location as the most spectacular and pristine they have ever been to – an area where a piece of paper abandoned on the pavement is an orphan. The courses are manicured to within an inch of their life and the service from resort and hotel staff amounts to shameless pampering.

* More details at www.killestertravel.com.