Mesa Magnifico: Northern New Mexico
Any traveling golfer logging on to paakoridge.com in January then scrolling down the “Course” menu to “Live Camera” would have seen a shot of the No. 9 green and fairway, covered in snow. The guy in search of a game elsewhere might then have phoned Black Mesa only to be told that it, too, was six inches under and unlikely to be open for a week or so yet. Huh? This is New Mexico, right? One state west of Texas, one east of Arizona, correct? This is the same place that Blondie, Angel-Eyes and Tuco galloped across parched, rocky deserts in search of $200,000 worth of buried coins, yeah? The place should be basking in 80 degree sunshine, shouldn’t it? The fairways should be filled with golfers wearing shorts and sunscreen, no? Apparently not. How wrong can you be? Snow is actually common in certain parts of New Mexico because, unlike the deserts on either side, much of New Mexico’s is set high above sea level — 6,500 feet in the case of Paa-Ko Ridge. Temperatures here can plunge as low as 20 degrees at night during winter, and snow, while something of a rarity at Black Mesa (5,500 feet), can close some of the more elevated courses for as much as three months. Indeed, the voice message at Paa-Ko informs the caller the course might not open again until early March. News of snow in New Mexico, and a thriving ski scene, wouldn’t register with locals, of course. But for outsiders, and certainly this hopelessly ignorant immigrant, it comes as something of a shock. Make Black Mesa your first stop. As you yank the rental off Interstate 84, 40 minutes north of Santa Fe, no doubt still muttering to yourself about how you could have been at Troon North, Gold Canyon or Grayhawk, Bali Hai, Paiute or Rio Secco and wondering how a course located in such a remote and seemingly unexceptional part of northern New Mexico of all places could be so highly regarded, just remember what Fairways + Greens told you: Unless you’re paired with Kim Jong-il, Charles Manson or Satan himself, this will be the most fun you have playing golf in a very long time. Opened in 2003, Black Mesa is the work of Baxter Spann, a vice president at Finger Dye Spann based in Houston, and came about quite by chance. In New Mexico, putting the final touches to the Marty Sanchez Golf Course, a Santa Fe municipal, in 1998, Spann was asked by developer Eddie Peck to scout a piece of land on which he intended to build a golf course, irrigated with effluent piped in from a treatment plant 10 miles away. While researching the route this pipeline would take, Peck discovered an altogether more dramatic landscape than his own, characterized by formidable sandstone ridges and owned by the Santa Clara Pueblo. It was perfect, he thought, for a golf course, so he asked Spann to take a look during his next visit. “I was blown away when I first saw it,” Spann says of the terrain. “It was treeless and had a sort of linksy look about it. And it was rugged with countless dramatic sandstone formations. It reminded me of an Irish seaside course in a way, although the weather was a bit different, of course.” As luck would have it, the Santa Clara were interested in building a course of their own and established a consortium alongside Peck, golf course builder Paul Ortiz and superintendent Pat Brockwell to develop Black Mesa. “He was so professional, had no ego and was clearly very passionate about the project,” Peck says of Spann. “He’s a gentleman and had carried out some consulting work for us free of charge. He really thought the piece of land was special and didn’t want to make any major changes to the landscape but rather let the beauty of the place speak for itself.” “The routing certainly took some work because we had so many options,” he remembers. “We could easily have found 100 great holes. But we knew we wanted the windmill that’s behind the 18th green to be a focus for the finish and the site of the clubhouse.” Spann knew No. 1, with its blind drive over a ridge to a crumpled fairway, would be controversial. “Most owners would have told me to bulldoze it,” he says. “They would have me take out the blind drive and make it flatter. But I had just played Tobacco Road prior to starting here and really liked the way Mike Strantz had left the natural features alone and just let the topography of the land dictate the shape of the holes. It looked different and perhaps a little intimidating in places, but it really wasn’t. It is a varied and enjoyable course, and I think it partly influenced the design of Black Mesa.” Spann estimates he made an unheard of 100 visits to the site between 1998 and 2003 and considers it the best he’s had to work with after nearly 30 years in the business. He saw the need to move only 200,000 cubic yards of earth, roughly half of which made way for the irrigation reservoir that fronts the No. 1 teebox. Aware he had an enormous responsibility to build a course worthy of the surroundings, Spann says he’s glad he was given the opportunity later rather than sooner. “A site like that has a way of making everyone look good,” he said in a 2003 interview with golfclubatlas.com. “But I can say this, in hindsight: I would not have wanted to touch that property without 25 years’ experience under my belt already. I think you have to pay your dues in this profession. You have to make a lot of mistakes to learn this art, but your mistakes are not on a canvas you can throw away if it doesn’t come out right. This land was too precious to make any blunders on. Hopefully we did right by it.” Two years before Spann first set foot on what was to become the course for which he is best known, his partner, Ken Dye, embarked on a career project of his own just an hour to the south. Paa-Ko Ridge was the brainchild of developer Roger Cox who sought bids from several design firms, including that of Johnny Miller, but in the end chose Dye largely because of the acclaim his design at Piñon Hills, in Farmington, N.M., had earned. “I finished Piñon Hills in 1988,” Dye says. “It was a great site, typical for New Mexico; over 1,000 acres and with so many interesting features, just like Paa-Ko. And there was so much sandstone, we just rolled over it in bulldozers to create a three- to four-inch layer of sand on the surface. That was great for drainage and helped keep costs down. I think we built that course for only $1.7 million.” Each time he flew into Albuquerque en route to Farmington, Dye would look down on the Sandia Mountains and imagine a course weaving through the valleys and ridges of the eastern slopes. “Even from 5,000 feet, I could tell the land was ideal for a golf course,” he says. “So I was thrilled to get the chance to build it.” Dye designed 27 holes but, in order to stay within Cox’s budget, only 18 were built during the first phase of construction. “I chose the land on the lower elevations for the first 18,” he says. “The soil was much better down there and we still had 300 feet of elevation change, so it’s not as if it was flat and dull.” The total cost for the course, irrigation, cart paths and all came to roughly $2.5 million, confirming Dye as one of the great value architects in the world. Paa-Ko’s third nine was eventually built two years after the first 18 opened when new home lots were created. The holes took a great deal more finding than the others, and there was some rock blasting to be done, but there are still numerous classics among them, namely the short par-5 No. 12, short par-4 No. 13 and par-4 No. 17. The third nine was a welcome addition indeed, and solidified Paa-Ko’s billing as the top course in New Mexico. “We have 26 outstanding, signature holes,” says Warren Lehr, director of golf. On the other side of the mountains at the Sandia Pueblo-owned Sandia Resort and Casino, 10 miles north of downtown Albuquerque, Scott Miller had a much harder time finding a great course. The backdrop was sensational but the land treeless and essentially devoid of variety. “The proximity to the 10,000-foot peaks put it among the top sites in the nation,” says Miller. “But the land itself wasn’t that special. People assume we must have moved large quantities of dirt to achieve the course we did, but we really didn’t. It was simply down to thoughtful routing.” In the hands of a less skillful architect it’s doubtful Sandia would have amounted to anything much, but Miller knows what he’s doing in the desert as We-ko-pa, Eagle Mountain, Kierland and DC Ranch in Arizona clearly demonstrate. The job took less than six months to complete from the moment Miller was hired to the day he finished seeding, the result a very worthy challenge and an enjoyable round if not quite in the same league as Black Mesa, Paa-Ko Ridge or the superb Gary Panks-designed Twin Warriors, set on 400 acres of Santa Ana Pueblo land 25 minutes north of Albuquerque. Elsewhere, Robert Trent Jones’ Cochiti is one of the old boy’s best efforts and warrants a diversion, as do Santa Ana — which local boy Notah Begay calls the best daily-fee course in Albuquerque — Isleta Eagle 15 minutes south of Albuquerque, the University of New Mexico’s Championship Course, Inn of the Mountain Gods in Mescalero, Elephant Butte’s Sierra Del Rio — which will open in July — and, thanks to advanced agronomy, uses 66 percent less water than similar size courses but still looks as good as anything you’ve ever seen, and the 27-hole (soon to be 36), 600-acre Towa Golf Resort between Santa Fe and Black Mesa. Top 5 You Can Play in and around Albuquerque and Santa Fe Black Mesa Paa-Ko Ridge Twin Warriors Piñon Hills Santa Ana reader comments
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Classic ClownSpring 2007
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