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Black Mesa will be part beauty, part beast
on anyone's New Mexico golf vacation.
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Black Mesa Golf Club near Santa Fe and Paa-Ko Ridge Golf Club near Albuquerque are arguably the two best courses to play on a New Mexico golf vacation, but in terms of the experiences they provide, they couldn’t be more different.
Set amidst rugged sandstone cliffs and mesas, desert arroyos, and native grasses, the Black Mesa golf course guides you from one strategic and relentlessly difficult challenge to another. And while architect Baxter Spann took steps to accommodate higher handicappers, there are still plenty of blind shots, hefty forced carries and narrow lanes of turf to contend with.
While the golf course would not by any means be considered an easy one to play on a New Mexico golf vacation, few can match Black Mesa’s combination of sheer beauty and supreme strategy.
Forty-Five minutes south of Santa Fe, Paa-Ko Ridge, designed by Ken Dye (one of Spann’s partners at Finger Dye Spann, Inc.), features an entirely different look and feel. While Black Mesa can be stark and forbidding, the high desert terrain of the Paa-Ko Ridge golf course is warm and embracing. Cut into the base of the mountains, the 27-hole layout sports a lush look with bluegrass fairways, glorious cedar and pinon tree forests, and green mountain ranges cascading in the distance.
In addition to its dreamlike beauty, Paa-Ko Ridge will likely play several shots easier than Black Mesa to the average person on a New Mexico golf vacation (even though the courses are rated almost exactly the same), mainly due to its 7,000-foot elevation.
Both courses were built on hilly terrain and feature very large greens, so whichever course you choose to play on your New Mexico golf vacation, be prepared for uneven lies and long, breaking putts.
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