Black Mesa part 3 – The White Album of Golf Courses?

Part one is here .
Part two is here.

CHIP SHOTS AND TAP-INS

 

Luckily for golfers, Spann’s visit to Tobacco Road inspired him to throw away the rule book.  The course is as un-Jones/Fazio as can be.  All the hackneyed tricks slick marketers and conventional designers use are absent and all the strategic elements and sharp natural features and severe greens they are afraid to embrace inspired Spann and he rose to the occasion.  Its fantastic greens solidify its colossal power, but its serpentine, naturally occurring routing makes it impregnable.  The course is Spann’s magnum opus.  From here on out, watch everything Baxter Spann does carefully, he has a lot left to say.

 

            If Black Mesa was a rock album, it would be The White Album, explorative and enduring, both an instant classic and forever a classic.  Just like The White Album, Black Mesa is one of the defining moments of its craft.  Along with Bandon Dunes and Tobacco Road, it is the quintessential facilities of this generation, just as Sawgrass before and Pebble Beach were the defining course’s of their eras.  And like The White Album, Black Mesa re-sets the bar for expectations as to what excellent work can achieve.

 

            Like both The White Album and Tobacco Road, it appears avante garde and progressive at first blush, but open-minded exploration reveals exactly how classic, natural and true Black Mesa is to the roots of its craft; quintessentially neo-classic.  With such elusive twisting corridors of fairway set amidst stark, barren confines as a backdrop, and with such intricate golf puzzles to decipher to score well, both Tobacco Road and Black Mesa take the player on a Jungian journey into the stygian recesses of his psyche using golf as a metaphor.  There is no escaping the dark and mysterious atmosphere they exude.  (That’s “dark” in the new sense of the word meaning “brooding and mysterious,” not “dark” in the old sense of the word meaning “dimly lit”).

 

If there is a drawback, with the course being built on sandy soil and showcasing strong fickle winds, the bunkers could look a bit more windblown or “blown out.”  In some instances, most notably 12, the bunkers look more like the cloverleafs of Joe Finger than natural wind erosion.  But hey, just like a beautiful woman, if the course were perfect, then that would be her flaw.

 

The same reverent and awestruck multitudes who so love Bandon Dunes are slowly coming to discover Black Mesa and now they are coming in brigades and divisions.  With nearby Paa-ko Ridge less than an hour away, New Mexico has a potent rejoinder to Scottsdale’s We-ko-pa and Talking Stick.  Once more lodging comes on line, this will easily rival the best resorts of Scottsdale.  With the ever changing wind and weather you can see sun, snow and hail all in one day during shoulder seasons.  Many people actually ski and golf in the same day.  It’s a rugged paradise in high summer and with its central location is easily accessible to Taos, Canyonlands, Mesa Verde and any other outdoor activity one can imagine.  We played on a day that exhibited the furthest extremes of weather; at one moment the sun warmed us and the next it snowed bricks and bats.  Then the freeze settled in and penetrated the four layers of fleece.  Despite all that, the course is easily walkable.

 

            Unspoiled New Mexico, unlike Arizona, is still full of mystery and romance.  It’s not as sterile as developed Scottsdale and has more charm, character and intrigue, at a fraction of the cost. The only drawback in the comparison is the weather; New Mexico has a few months of winter while Scottsdale does not, but the summers are not as scalding either.

 

Most importantly, it’s rare to find a developer like Eddie Peck who understands that strategy not gimmicks are the soul of a great golf course.  Any other developer who heard he was getting a course inspired by Tobacco Road and starting with a blind drive with a forced carry might have recoiled in horror.  The game needs more savvy developers like Peck who understand the soul of the game and strive to protect the natural features of the land…and who jovially share the course with dogs while smoking Hemingway cigars.