Architect: Tom Doak
Walkable: Absolutely. It’s walking only but there are some good climbs in spots.
Highlighted Holes: 3, 7, 8, 9, 13, 16
Located amidst the chop hills of Eastern Colorado, south of Holyoke and about an hour from the interstate, Ballyneal is a world class golf course regularly found nestled in the top half of top 100 lists. It was brought to life by two brothers, Jim and Rupert O’Neal, who had come from a Colorado farming family. In the early 2000s they enlisted Tom Doak, who was fresh off building Pacific Dunes and a hot commodity in the architecture world. They gave him hundreds of sandy acres and the goal to build an incredible golf course; and so he did.
From the complexity of the holes to the top-tier accommodations, Ballyneal has to be the perfect members course. The fairways are wide enough for multiple routes with swales and rolling dunes that open up and close off angles into greens. You can go in high, but it’s a course perfectly built to let the ball run. The fairways are fast fescue and much to my delight, anything within ten or twenty feet of the green can be putted. There are big, natural bunkers galore and there are small dot bunkers strategically placed to make you laugh if you’ve found one.
Greens flow smoothly into tee boxes as either a continuation of the fringe or via a short hike along railroad ties and packed sand. The land is so perfect for golf that anywhere without grass is sand. It’s said that part of links golf is creating shots and when I found myself on a footpath behind a green, I was able to splash it out as a bunker shot.
The movement within the fairways guarantees that is position is critical. You could hit 14 fairways and be out of position on each and every approach. Doak’s use of the contours in the fairways is one of the aspects that rewards local knowledge, and it behooves the golfer to take some time on the tee to find the best position for going at the green. This positioning is often offset by the cavernous bunkers or deep grass you need to flirt with to find your spot.
The dunes are big, at times overwhelming, and as The Fried Egg’s Andy Johnson describes them, “abrupt.” They looked to me like pictures of the big beige dunes of Ireland, but at Ballyneal, wildflowers blanket the long grass across the hills. This mix of nature and calm creates serenity that surely must only exist in a few places in the world. The course isn’t near any roads, there’s no cart traffic, and the only sounds are the wind and the birds. Think of the clubhouse as land and the course as an ocean.
Three: There is dramatic bunkering on all of the par threes and the bunkers here are on all sides. The green slopes away so anything coming in hot will bounce over the green, likely into the back bunkers. The most effective route is the room hidden in front of the green for running the ball up and back into the proper section.
Seven: The green at the seventh gets a lot of glory, and for good reason, but the fairway has the tempest tossed sea feel of the eighth at Prairie Dunes. You can see the green peaking around the massive bunker from the teebox, and it almost looks reachable. To the right of the bunker are the vicious waves from which blind shots await those who fall in. Cover them and you’ll approach from a mostly flat lie. The green itself is the shape of a giant ‘E’ with bunker that creep between the arms of the letter. The large mound at the front left of the green allows the experienced golfer to feed the ball off and into the different pockets. Hit it too hard it and you’ll wind up in the lefthand bunker or over the green.
Eight: So much can go wrong here. From the tee, good luck seeing the fairway for the bunkers, dunes, and long stuff. It’s not a long hole, but the vertical movement masks many of the safe spots and visually shrinks the room you know you have. Find the large bunkers that creep in and you have no choice but to blindly hit a wedge out. Once you get there, the green is phenomenal with three large humps that help create a wide variety of pin positions.
Nine: The ninth anchors the strong three hole stretch that closes out the front nine. The tee shot is uphill before the sudden narrowing of the fairway. The closer you can keep your drive to the large center-left bunker, the better look you’re going to have at the green. As the hole tightens, the dune grows and you feel dwarfed and crowded. The fairway rises then quickly drops into the fringe ahead of the green. The hole makes every bit of use of the ground it’s on to spectacular effect.
Thirteen: Like my favorite holes at Bayside, thirteen is wide, bunkered, and relatively short. If you put lines of approach atop it, it would look like the famous MacKenzie sketch outlining all the ways to play his Lido hole. Not only do you need to consider the bunkers, but the hollows. When you get there, the green has different sections where finding yourself out of position puts pressure on your putting.
Sixteen: If asked to name any holes out here, I might call this one behemoth or leviathan. From above it looks like a sea monster – bunkered eyes, narrow gullet, large stomach, and a wispy tail – though we approach this eldritch horror from behind. From the tee, the fairway appears to go nowhere. No green, no guidance, abyss. Take the leap and at your ball look left. As on nine, the fairway narrows then opens, this time to a deep front bunker, a green that plays skinnier than it looks, and three imposing bunkers above the right shoulder like the Greek Furies. Should Ballyneal ever consider the naming their hazards like the Old Course, please call me – I’d love to contribute.
Final Thoughts
At no point in the midst of either nine did I really ever know where I was in relation to: the other holes, the clubhouse, or civilization. It was only going out and coming back that I felt like I was headed for shore. From the wavelike fairways kicked up in a storm to the threatening and ever watchful dunes that cast shadow and judgment upon your game, playing Ballyneal is like an ocean voyage. Like Odysseus, like Ahab, like Sinbad, we approach the adventure singleminded, but at its mercy.1
While the site is remarkable, the course is such an overwhelming collection of ups and downs, twists and turns, that the only way to truly appreciate it is to spend enough time there to really feel it out and study. Each green has at least five fun spots for pins, each distinct and different. There is no way to fault a course for having too many options and too much intrigue, but as a guest I can tell that there’s no way I got the fullness of Ballyneal in 18 holes. One round is not enough, and I eagerly await my next opportunity to find more pieces to put towards the puzzle.
Further Reading
Ballyneal Golf and Hunt Club – GolfClubAtlas
Max fun factor: Ballyneal Golf Club – The Fried Egg
Ballyneal redux: A pictorial!!! (18th hole posted) – GolfClubAtlas
Ballyneal: Tom Doak’s Masterpiece – The Fried Egg (video)
Bonus (Walks)
Footnotes
- It took a lot of restraint not to frame the entire article as a nautical journey with each hole a different chapter. ↩︎
Layman's Hall 
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