Paa-Ko Ridge Golf Club, Albuquerque, NM (public). Opening: April
Five years ago, when the owners of New Mexico's Paa-Ko Ridge realized that Ken Dye's high-desert wonder had become a Top 100 course on par with Scottsdale's finest, they must have been pleased to know he'd already routed a nine-hole encore. Little did they know that this half-course might trump the original.
Rising some 6,500 feet in the aromatic piñon-and-juniper foothills east of Albuquerque, the new nine are far rockier than the first eighteen, and with elevation changes of up to 250 feet, many of the new holes are sloped more severely than their predecessors. Golfers still have sixty-mile views of five mountain ranges, but here Dye also conjured a surprise: three tributes to Scotland.
The fourth hole, a 230-yard downhill par three with a magnificent view west, is a "Redan" hole riffing on the much-copied fifteenth at North Berwick. Number five, a longer version of Muirfield's ninth, boasts angular cross-bunkering. And number six, a short one-shotter, channels Royal Troon's "Postage Stamp," replete with a no-bailout plateau green that will try souls on windy days.
"I've never been able to 'copy' any of the great holes," said Dye, "but on just those holes I had some fairly level land on a mountainous site. They worked out well." Indeed.
Yardage: 3,874. Par: 36. Greens Fees: $65$85. Tee Times: 505-281-6000 or visit paakoridge.com.
