Every golf course is designed for a different purpose, to fulfill a different function, for different people. They all, however, share one common obligation: be interesting. Jim Engh once said he was in the “image creation business,” and if there’s anything that can be said about his courses with 100 percent accuracy, it’s that none…
Most people would say the state of Colorado’s best natural assets are the Rocky Mountains. When it comes to golf I’d argue the best thing going for it are the high prairies along the eastern Front Range. The mountain courses, visually dramatic and non-replicable anywhere else, are often difficult to build and unyielding to play…
Someday we’ll be able to talk about Ballyneal in the northeastern corner of Colorado without referencing Sand Hills, as I’ve already just done. It’s kind of like how it took about 15 years for every new violent, ironic crime movie not to be viewed through the lens of Pulp Fiction. Such is the advantage of being first—you get to…
Walking Stick features one of the most distinctive natural features in Colorado golf, a gaping, rocky arroyo, yawning wide in anticipation of errant shots. Too bad it’s an almost irrelevant golf feature. Maybe architect Arthur Hills was shy about having public players hit over the chasm, or there was no affordable way to get golfers…
Every architect’s ideal scenario is to be able string together unlimited variations of holes on a vast, moving, unencumbered property. Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw’s boundless opportunity at Sand Hills comes to mind when we think of the ultimate example of man vs. wild golf design. In other situations, limitless freedom across a property can be anything but liberating. Few places…
Going around Red Hawk Ridge you can see the ideas and embryonic elements of the shapes and playability motifs that Jim Engh would further develop in the early 2000’s at a number of nationally acclaimed courses that launched him into the upper orbit of golf architecture. Built in 1999 in Castle Rock, just south of Denver, Red Hawk Ridge is a more modest…
Poor Donald Ross. For decades since his death in 1948, Ross — and the spirit of Ross — has been forced to suffer the fate (and sometimes the indignity) of watching his golf courses stripped, stretched, overhauled, burnished and otherwise bastardized by generation after generation of greens committee and architect. Ross’s courses have probably seen more changes through…