jamesdeluxe
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jul 17, 2020
Since returning from Switzerland the second week of March, the furthest afield I'd been over the previous six months was to play golf in the Poconos 90 minutes away, so for my first long-distance travel, I flew west to Colorado to take part in my organization's annual charity golf tournament. I remember during the dark days of the pandemic shutdown in April when companies were cancelling trade shows and conferences through the end of the year, we figured that our event at the famed golf course Sanctuary at the end of August had slim to no chance of taking place. To our CEO's credit, he refused to let anyone on our staff even mutter the word "cancel."
Sanctuary has an interesting back story: when Dave Liniger and his wife, co-founders of Denver-based real-estate behemoth RE/MAX, were reportedly treated poorly at the highly exclusive Castle Pines golf club, he did the ultimate payback move of someone with significant wealth: built his own even more exclusive course not even two miles away.
Sanctuary isn't a classic country club where members pay huge fees every year to play whenever they want, hold member/guest tournaments, or buy a condo or McMansion alongside the course. The only people who are permitted to play at Sanctuary are either a) invited personally by the owners or b) selected nonprofits they allow to hold fundraiser events. My organization, Project C.U.R.E., is one of them; this is our 17th annual tournament. For more details and pix about Sanctuary, check out Colorado's Most Elusive Round of Golf (I can't believe they gave it an overall grade of A-), an article by Golf Course Gurus, and this hole-by-hole photo coverage. With forest fires raging throughout the state, smoke had obscured the views of the Front Range on the day I played so it's good to see other people's pix with clear sightlines of the stunning scenery.
For a skiing analogy, the clubhouse looks and feels like the lodges at Snowbasin or Sun Valley. All of that is real stone mined in Colorado, not stucco.
Instead of starting the day with the traditional putting competition (nixed due to social distancing), following breakfast there was a helicopter ball drop. Here it is coming over the driving range; you can see a bit of aforementioned Castle Pines' condos and course behind the trees on the left.
It dropped 125 balls with a number for every participant. If the ball with your number was closest to the pin, you won a big prize:
To reach the first tee, you go under the clubhouse grotto with nice cool air on the 97-degree day:
Additional fortifications for the front nine:
Course designer Jim Engh is known for sculpting his courses in a variety of ways, including muscle bunkers (I'd never heard that term before), extreme tiered greens (where the ball rolls back off the green if you don't hit it hard enough/like miniature golf), waterfalls, and numerous elevated tee boxes. Here's the first hole, which has four tee levels. The top tee box, above where I took this pic, has a vertical drop of almost 300 feet down to the landing area below. They held a long-drive contest on this hole; the winner launched it 345 yards, just beyond the foursome in carts in the middle of the fairway:
Lots of turkeys all over the course:
My playing partner looking for his ball on the steep embankment -- you can see what it'd look like here without the extensive irrigation:
An unavoidable challenge for groundskeepers in the middle of a wildlife sanctuary: elk hoof prints on the greens:
An interesting par 3:
Heading into the turn: the ninth green with turkeys and waterfall:
Dogleg right -- a long tee shot can cut the corner and put you in front of the green. I played it conservatively between the goal posts:
My big moment: I sunk a 110-foot putt (we measured it) from the very front of this green for a birdie:
On this par 4, mere mortals like yours truly tee off to the landing area in front of the pond. One of my foursome drove over the trees 330 yards to the green, six feet from the pin, and putted in for an eagle:
A chance for immortality. With a decent breeze blowing in our face, my 7-iron was the right club but the ball landed in the upper waterfall.
We had colleagues stationed in the tent to visually corroborate any hole in ones:
With this drive, my cart partner was the closest of anyone all day to getting the $10K:
Carts were outfitted with video assist screens: maps with front and reverse-shot views, current distance to hole, and approach recommendations:
Finishing up on the 18th green with another waterfall in the background:
During previous tournaments at Sanctuary, there are drinks after the round followed by a fantastic dinner; however, they decided against it due to COVID distancing, which was fine with me as I was completely wiped out by being in golf heaven for 4.5 hours. There's so much elevation change and distance between holes at the course; even riding in a cart was a decent workout.
In short, easily one of the most beautiful golf courses I've ever played.
Sanctuary has an interesting back story: when Dave Liniger and his wife, co-founders of Denver-based real-estate behemoth RE/MAX, were reportedly treated poorly at the highly exclusive Castle Pines golf club, he did the ultimate payback move of someone with significant wealth: built his own even more exclusive course not even two miles away.
Sanctuary isn't a classic country club where members pay huge fees every year to play whenever they want, hold member/guest tournaments, or buy a condo or McMansion alongside the course. The only people who are permitted to play at Sanctuary are either a) invited personally by the owners or b) selected nonprofits they allow to hold fundraiser events. My organization, Project C.U.R.E., is one of them; this is our 17th annual tournament. For more details and pix about Sanctuary, check out Colorado's Most Elusive Round of Golf (I can't believe they gave it an overall grade of A-), an article by Golf Course Gurus, and this hole-by-hole photo coverage. With forest fires raging throughout the state, smoke had obscured the views of the Front Range on the day I played so it's good to see other people's pix with clear sightlines of the stunning scenery.
For a skiing analogy, the clubhouse looks and feels like the lodges at Snowbasin or Sun Valley. All of that is real stone mined in Colorado, not stucco.
Instead of starting the day with the traditional putting competition (nixed due to social distancing), following breakfast there was a helicopter ball drop. Here it is coming over the driving range; you can see a bit of aforementioned Castle Pines' condos and course behind the trees on the left.
It dropped 125 balls with a number for every participant. If the ball with your number was closest to the pin, you won a big prize:
To reach the first tee, you go under the clubhouse grotto with nice cool air on the 97-degree day:
Additional fortifications for the front nine:
Course designer Jim Engh is known for sculpting his courses in a variety of ways, including muscle bunkers (I'd never heard that term before), extreme tiered greens (where the ball rolls back off the green if you don't hit it hard enough/like miniature golf), waterfalls, and numerous elevated tee boxes. Here's the first hole, which has four tee levels. The top tee box, above where I took this pic, has a vertical drop of almost 300 feet down to the landing area below. They held a long-drive contest on this hole; the winner launched it 345 yards, just beyond the foursome in carts in the middle of the fairway:
Lots of turkeys all over the course:
My playing partner looking for his ball on the steep embankment -- you can see what it'd look like here without the extensive irrigation:
An unavoidable challenge for groundskeepers in the middle of a wildlife sanctuary: elk hoof prints on the greens:
An interesting par 3:
Heading into the turn: the ninth green with turkeys and waterfall:
Dogleg right -- a long tee shot can cut the corner and put you in front of the green. I played it conservatively between the goal posts:
My big moment: I sunk a 110-foot putt (we measured it) from the very front of this green for a birdie:
On this par 4, mere mortals like yours truly tee off to the landing area in front of the pond. One of my foursome drove over the trees 330 yards to the green, six feet from the pin, and putted in for an eagle:
A chance for immortality. With a decent breeze blowing in our face, my 7-iron was the right club but the ball landed in the upper waterfall.
We had colleagues stationed in the tent to visually corroborate any hole in ones:
With this drive, my cart partner was the closest of anyone all day to getting the $10K:
Carts were outfitted with video assist screens: maps with front and reverse-shot views, current distance to hole, and approach recommendations:
Finishing up on the 18th green with another waterfall in the background:
During previous tournaments at Sanctuary, there are drinks after the round followed by a fantastic dinner; however, they decided against it due to COVID distancing, which was fine with me as I was completely wiped out by being in golf heaven for 4.5 hours. There's so much elevation change and distance between holes at the course; even riding in a cart was a decent workout.
In short, easily one of the most beautiful golf courses I've ever played.
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