Since I have not played there yet, I'll leave it to those who have for their comments.
Steve
www.golfdigest.com/courses/critic/index.ssf?/courses/critic/blackmesa.htmlCourse Critic
Black Mesa Golf Club, La Mesilla, New Mexico
I've written elsewhere about Black Mesa Golf Club, Golf Digest's Best New Affordable Public Course of 2003, describing it as a "mountainous minimalist" design.
Though it sounds oxymoronic, I stand by that description. The fairways of Black Mesa hug the natural slopes and ridgelines of its foothills location. Its recessed bunkers are positioned where wind and erosion might well have carved them out, and its greens seem effortlessly positioned in canyons, on rocky shelves, and alongside dry washes.
Course architect Baxter Spann had not previously been known for lay-of-the-land design, but, in my mind, what he established at Black Mesa ranks among the very best minimalist layouts in America. It's on a par with Tom Doak's Pacific Dunes, for example, and its achievement even exceeds that wonderful coastal layout, because it's a lot tougher to push around sandstone rock and keep it looking natural than it is the sand dunes of Oregon.
Too often, an architect working in mountainous terrain ends up making "road cuts" in order to accommodate golf holes. The result are hillside gashes that leave exposed strata of rock. (One of the most blatant examples of that style is Eagle Vail in Colorado, a 25-year-old Von Hagge and Devlin design that still has no vegetation on those gashes.) But at Black Mesa, Spann let the fairways rock and roll across the jagged landscape. Ridgelines that flow from hilltop peaks were retained across fairways and into far roughs. Folds and crevices became pockets of fairway or bunkers. Everything fits so snuggly that, if lava were green instead of black, you'd swear the holes at Black Mesa were simply lava flows.
I don't want my enthusiasm for the "big picture" at Black Mesa to overshadow a very important detail of its design. These aren't just great holes artistically and technically; they're also great in their strategies.
There are at least two different ways to play every hole at Black Mesa, and often three ways (not counting bouncing a ball off a rock formation and having it ricochet onto a green). It starts at the 385-yard, uphill, dogleg-left first hole, where you can gamble with a driver to a very narrow landing spot, or do as I did, and pop a 5-wood over a sandstone ridge on the right to a very generous but hidden fairway. On the par-4 second, a mountainside jutting out midway between landing area and green really dictates the tee shot. Play left center for a clear view of the green. Drift right, as I did, and you're coming in half-blind over the corner of a steep, rocky slope.
One of the best gambling holes on the course is the downhill (and sidehill) 356-yard seventh. I played it from the 319-yard regular tee, aimed left so the ball would catch the left-to-right slope and smashed a drive over a fairway bunker. It took the bounce and ended right to the base of the elevated green. I then deliberately overplayed my lob shot to the back fringe, hoping the ball would trickle back down toward the hole. It did, and I got my only birdie of my round.
An even better gamble is the 389-yard 14th, with a wide two-level fairway separated by a small "meteor crater" of rock directly in the center. Others played to the wide, safe, right-hand side on this dogleg left, but I aimed up the left side, directly over a massive bunker (just 180 yards or so off the tee, but intimidating nonetheless) and saw my perfect drive disappear over the horizon of the left-hand fairway. What I discovered was that fairway ended abruptly in a desert wash, and as luck would have it, my ball bounded down the slope and into it. I had no trouble hitting out of the wash (I reached the front fringe, in fact) but had a lot of trouble climbing out. Its steep, soft, sandy sides kept collapsing under my feet, and I wandered down the wash a good 100 yards before I found a slope gentle enough to climb up. It was only later that I noticed a "Beware of Rattlesnakes" sign.
I don't want to leave the wrong impression. A round at Black Mesa involves mountain climbing only if you hit it sideways, or fall for a sucker gamble as I did on the 14th. However, you may get exhausted trying to decipher the steep slopes of some if its greens.
If there's a criticism to be leveled at Black Mesa, it's that none of its greens are anywhere near level. Most are very heavily contoured, perhaps excessively so for a public course. No green at Augusta National has anything on the 16th at Black Mesa, which has two lower decks and an upper one, separated by ridgelines and a prominent nose.
I remember it all too well, for I was putting for a birdie and ended up signing for a double bogey. It took me three tries to get it up the slope and keep it there. In retrospect, I should have used a lob wedge for my first putt, aimed for the back fringe and let the ball trickle back down to the hole. Or better yet, I should have hit my ball next to the flag in the first place.