jamesdeluxe
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jul 17, 2020
Last August, I made my first visit to Sanctuary golf course and was knocked out by how golf architect Jim Engh created such a visually stunning layout amongst this majestic New Mexico-like space in the foothills of Sedalia, south of Denver. On Monday, I returned for our annual charity tournament.
Arriving behind my organisation's mascot truck that's usually parked in the warehouse at our headquarters 20 minutes away:
It's a 1951 International Harvester L-150 that was donated to us and then restored. Its original sticker price was $1,619.
Arriving at 8:30 am, the views of the surrounding scenery were more expansive than last year when forest fires were burning throughout the state.
From the breakfast terrace:
Our events director Wendy is happy that months of hard work are about to pay off:
As mentioned in my previous report, Sanctuary is worth playing just for the impressive scenery and feeling of isolation thanks to no real-estate development on the 12,000 acres surrounding the course. That said; there are widely differing opinions on the course with with some golfers praising Engh effusively for putting a layout on very challenging (shall we say "undulating" terrain) while others claim that his "overly engineered" design isn't to their taste. I'm certainly more in the first camp and would be happy to play here whenever possible but can understand why purists might bristle about his style.
Hole #1 with a three-hundred-foot drop to the fairway from the top tee:
Hole #5/par 3
One of our longtime sponsors -- I'll explain their story below:
Hole #7, one of the easier par-3s but you still have to clear the bushes and grass:
The rough on the left side of this hole gave him a better shot at the stick:
The pic makes it look flat but that's a severe uphill from the tee on Hole #8:
This guy didn't hit his putt hard enough; the ball rolled back well off the green:
On the 11th tee, longball hitter Dan "Smackintosh" was blasting drives to give players the opportunity to win a trip to Pebble Beach:
Dan had a meter measuring his swing speed -- on one drive, he reached 150 mph, which is 10-15 clicks faster than the hardest hitter on the PGA tour, Bryson DeChambeau:
I watched his longest drive of the day, which was measured at 450 yards. If you subtract 10-12% due to the high elevation, that's still 400+ yards.
18th green:
The event wrapped up with an appearance by iconic American Furniture Warehouse founder Jake Jabs. His commercials were a mainstay on Colorado TV when I was a student in the 1980s and it was fun to meet him. Here he is preparing to auction off one of his famous stuffed tigers:
At age 87, he can still do a mean rapid-fire auction rap:
Arriving behind my organisation's mascot truck that's usually parked in the warehouse at our headquarters 20 minutes away:
It's a 1951 International Harvester L-150 that was donated to us and then restored. Its original sticker price was $1,619.
Arriving at 8:30 am, the views of the surrounding scenery were more expansive than last year when forest fires were burning throughout the state.
From the breakfast terrace:
Our events director Wendy is happy that months of hard work are about to pay off:
As mentioned in my previous report, Sanctuary is worth playing just for the impressive scenery and feeling of isolation thanks to no real-estate development on the 12,000 acres surrounding the course. That said; there are widely differing opinions on the course with with some golfers praising Engh effusively for putting a layout on very challenging (shall we say "undulating" terrain) while others claim that his "overly engineered" design isn't to their taste. I'm certainly more in the first camp and would be happy to play here whenever possible but can understand why purists might bristle about his style.
Hole #1 with a three-hundred-foot drop to the fairway from the top tee:
Hole #5/par 3
One of our longtime sponsors -- I'll explain their story below:
Hole #7, one of the easier par-3s but you still have to clear the bushes and grass:
The rough on the left side of this hole gave him a better shot at the stick:
The pic makes it look flat but that's a severe uphill from the tee on Hole #8:
This guy didn't hit his putt hard enough; the ball rolled back well off the green:
On the 11th tee, longball hitter Dan "Smackintosh" was blasting drives to give players the opportunity to win a trip to Pebble Beach:
Dan had a meter measuring his swing speed -- on one drive, he reached 150 mph, which is 10-15 clicks faster than the hardest hitter on the PGA tour, Bryson DeChambeau:
I watched his longest drive of the day, which was measured at 450 yards. If you subtract 10-12% due to the high elevation, that's still 400+ yards.
18th green:
The event wrapped up with an appearance by iconic American Furniture Warehouse founder Jake Jabs. His commercials were a mainstay on Colorado TV when I was a student in the 1980s and it was fun to meet him. Here he is preparing to auction off one of his famous stuffed tigers:
At age 87, he can still do a mean rapid-fire auction rap:
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