At the front desk of the striking, tin-roofed, territorial-style clubhouse at New Mexico's Black Mesa Golf Club, the state's seventh and newest layout that is Native American owned and operated, a small sign offers the following welcome: BIG COURSE—BIG MEDICINE. IT WILL KICK YOUR BUTT.
"Oh, it looks harder than it is," says general manager Eddie Peck, laughing. "But we do highly recommend you use the driving range before your round."
Setting his course high in the stark, rugged foothills of the Santa Clara Pueblo, about twenty miles north of Santa Fe, designer Baxter Spann has created a true femme fatale: gorgeous, tough, enigmatic. At the 385-yard par-four opener, just past the rusty Aero-Motor windmill creaking in the Jemez Range breeze, you're asked to launch a blind tee shot some 220 yards over a cactus-studded ridge between a pond and an arroyo. "Number one gets your attention," Spann deadpans. It's the first of many tough drives on this more than 7,300-yarder, but the bluegrass fairways are generous and the bent-grass greens spacious. Choose wisely among the five tee boxes.
As with all pueblo tracks there's no fairway housing at Black Mesa, so golfers get an unobstructed view of its steep, secluded bluffs, which often isolate the holes from each other and intensify the high-desert solitude. Parts of the course have the carpet-in-the-desert feel of Las Vegas, while elsewhere, with its wispy native grasses and wildflowers, the place feels like an Irish links, only warmer.
"Black Mesa is my favorite so far," says Spann, whose Marty Sanchez Links de Santa Fe is widely considered among the country's finest municipal designs. "The natural setting alone is something I would pay to see."
—Bruce Selcraig
Greens Fees: $30-$50. Tee Times: 505-747-8946 or visit blackmesagolfclub.com.
