Cougar Canyon Golf Links roars onto the Colorado golf scene.
Along Trinidad’s historic Main Street, the tang of Italian sausage commingles with the heady aroma of roasted green chiles and the fiery smoke of authentic Texas barbecue. Brewed in this southern Colorado melting pot, the blend is an olfactory cocktail strong enough to confound the most seasoned tourist. Keep heading east, however, and the familiar scent of freshly mown grass takes over, leading you to Cougar Canyon Golf Links, a Nicklaus Design that opens this spring.
The home of Colorado’s newest daily-fee layout is also home to one of its oldest. Built in 1915, Trinidad Municipal Golf Course remains one of the finest nine-hole layouts in Colorado. But with the area’s mild climate, which often allows play 10 months of the year, there’s long been a need for a top-flight course.
Pete Schrepfer, a local developer and managing partner, and the principals of Nicklaus Design finally met that need. From a real-estate perspective, Schrepfer thinks Trinidad’s climate, downtown revitalization and rich Old West history will make life at Cougar Canyon attractive to prospective second-home buyers who still want to be within three hours or so of a major city. Plans for the 1,500-acre property—which abuts 3,000 acres of conservation land—call for approximately 1,600 lots, 140 town homes, a combination clubhouse/resort hotel, and 100-plus casitas available for rent or possible fractional ownership. Add a world-class spa to the amenities list, along with a restaurant, swimming pool, 10,000-square-foot fitness center and one of the more expansive double-sided practice ranges in Colorado.
The golf, however, comes first. Schrepfer and his partners originally tabbed Baxter Spann of Finger Dye Spann Inc. to design the course. But the marketing advantage of a Nicklaus Design prompted the principals to change design teams. Long known as the upper echelon of golf-course design and development, the folks at Nicklaus Design were excited about the possibility that Cougar Canyon will garner “Best New Course in America” distinctions.
“When we started studying Trinidad, we saw an old-time mining town with a rich history,” says Nicklaus Design associate Chris Cochran. “Why not design an old-style golf course?” Explore the bunkers on this minimalist, 7,700-yard par 72 with its distant views of the Spanish Peaks and Sangre de Cristos, and you’ll experience a golf journey back in time. “There are only 33 bunkers–nearly a half to a third that’s on most new courses,” Cochran explains. “They are retro—a throwback to the 1920s—and they will remind you of old Seth Raynor bunkers that are deep and penal. Still in most of these bunkers you will be able to hit a mid- to long-iron out of them.”
Sinuous Gray Creek, however, might be the most striking contribution to this rugged layout stippled by piñons, junipers and chollas. Spacious enough to hide outlaws on horseback from a posse, this wash jags along, around and through the fairways, plunging 40 to 50 feet at many points and forcing all kinds of carries off the tees and onto the greens. Most dramatically, this draw forms a natural island green on the 163-yard, par-three 16th, which gets my vote for one of the best one-shotters in the state.
The other 17 holes at Cougar Canyon Golf Links don’t disappoint, either. The course begins on flatter land before meandering with gradual climbs in elevation. Your first adventure with the wash comes on the second, a 188-yard par three, as the draw engulfs the rear with two deep bunkers guarding the right side.
Your slightly uphill tee shot at the third, a 575-yard par five, must carry the wash, which then splits the fairway and protects the approach to an hourglass green with bunkers behind it. Not all hazards are obvious. On the 513-yard, par-four fifth, for example, you’ll need to boom a drive along the left side of the super-wide sloping fairway or you’ll be playing your second shot uphill from the right rough.
On the sixth, a 545-yard par five, Fisher’s Peak comes into view. A 9,600-foot, volcanic, basalt-capped mesa that towers over the city, Fisher’s Peak didn’t produce the lightweight, black-lava sand that fills Cougar Canyon’s bunkers, but it certainly provided inspiration for using the silicate, which originates from Capulin, an ancient volcano about 60 miles south in New Mexico.
The seventh, a 418-yard, right-dogleg par four, requires a volcanic but precise drive for any chance at birdie. Opt for a fairway wood off the tee and you might find yourself with a blind shot, as piñons and junipers pinch the fairway into a narrow notch about 160 yards from the green. The slope heads downhill with a pot bunker right, 20 yards from the green.
After contending with Gray Creek on the final two holes of the front nine, you begin the back with the troublesome 10th, a 349-yard, risk-reward par four that heads back up the natural hillside. There’s a lot of movement in the bowled fairway, with a mean natural area too far left. The safe play is to the middle right, avoiding a series of bunkers. A precise tee shot will leave a simple wedge to the elevated green, which has a right-to-left movement.
Don’t let the yawning bunker with a 9-foot face intimidate you on the 262-yard, par-three 11th. Clear it and you’ll get a nice kick onto the punch-bowl green. And don’t look down when you arrive at the back tee on the 602-yard, par-five 12th. A 30-foot drop into Gray Creek is directly in front of it, and the hole itself uses the wash along the left side as its lone hazard. If your drive and approach tightrope along its edge, you’ll have a great chance at birdie.
The ubiquitous draw and some iniquitous bunkers define strategy and the shape of the par fours on 13 and 14. As the routing turns back toward home, the 15th, a straightaway, 674-yard par five, could get a boost from a southerly breeze. Just avoid the cross bunker at the second landing area—it is the nastiest on the course: 10 feet deep.
Take some time to peer down the 30-foot drop in front of the green at 16, that aforementioned 163-yard par three, and you might see cougar tracks in the creek bed amidst the salt cedar bushes.
Seventeen is a 505-yard par four, straight ahead with a pot bunker in the middle and in front of the green. The huge man-made irrigation lake looms in back, fed by the historic Purgatoire River that rolls on the north side of Highway 160. Bunkers are in the rear of the green, and the wash is down the right side. The closing tee shot angles over the lake on a 433-yard par four. The farthest bunker guarding the left side pinches the fairway to a narrow area, and the green sits adjacent to the lake on the right. The difficulty is the two-tiered green—the backbone running from center to back-center.
Even though the back-tees yardage is intimidating for high-handicappers, Cochran says the course was designed for second-home owners who would rather play from about 6,800 yards. “In order to attract people from say, Pueblo, you need some teeth to a new course,” Cochran says. “So we designed a strategic layout where tee-shot positioning is required. It is very playable, but for competitions, all you need is to firm up the greens and grow a little rough.”
“A little rough” might describe the history of Trinidad. Located about 200 miles south of Denver, Trinidad by the mid-1880s was such a popular stop on the Santa Fe Trail that it boasted 33 saloons. Things got so rowdy that lawman Bat Masterson was hired to tone down the hooligans, and some say Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday headed there after the OK Corral gunfight. Even Billy the Kid and Black Jack Ketchum spent time there. By the dawn of the 20th century, the coal-mining industry had flooded Trinidad with so many immigrants that more than two dozen languages were spoken along Main Street.
To those with a vivid imagination, a stroll through the Corazon de Trinidad National Historic District, once humming with the clanging of street cars and the tattooing hooves of mounted cowboys, is an Old West déjà vu, with brick avenues lined with Victorian architecture and a scenic mountain panorama. And just east of that historic tableau, in the development of Cougar Canyon, new fairways are leading Trinidad toward its future.
Contributing editor David R. Holland is author of The Colorado Golf Bible and a former sportswriter for The Dallas Morning News. He writes for four regional golf magazines, one national golf magazine and one international golf magazine.
A Different Breed of Cat
From Colorado AvidGolfer
By David R. Holland
Cougar Canyon Golf Links roars onto the Colorado golf scene.
Along Trinidad’s historic Main Street, the tang of Italian sausage commingles with the heady aroma of roasted green chiles and the fiery smoke of authentic Texas barbecue. Brewed in this southern Colorado melting pot, the blend is an olfactory cocktail strong enough to confound the most seasoned tourist. Keep heading east, however, and the familiar scent of freshly mown grass takes over, leading you to Cougar Canyon Golf Links, a Nicklaus Design that opens this spring.
The home of Colorado’s newest daily-fee layout is also home to one of its oldest. Built in 1915, Trinidad Municipal Golf Course remains one of the finest nine-hole layouts in Colorado. But with the area’s mild climate, which often allows play 10 months of the year, there’s long been a need for a top-flight course.
Pete Schrepfer, a local developer and managing partner, and the principals of Nicklaus Design finally met that need. From a real-estate perspective, Schrepfer thinks Trinidad’s climate, downtown revitalization and rich Old West history will make life at Cougar Canyon attractive to prospective second-home buyers who still want to be within three hours or so of a major city. Plans for the 1,500-acre property—which abuts 3,000 acres of conservation land—call for approximately 1,600 lots, 140 town homes, a combination clubhouse/resort hotel, and 100-plus casitas available for rent or possible fractional ownership. Add a world-class spa to the amenities list, along with a restaurant, swimming pool, 10,000-square-foot fitness center and one of the more expansive double-sided practice ranges in Colorado.
The golf, however, comes first. Schrepfer and his partners originally tabbed Baxter Spann of Finger Dye Spann Inc. to design the course. But the marketing advantage of a Nicklaus Design prompted the principals to change design teams. Long known as the upper echelon of golf-course design and development, the folks at Nicklaus Design were excited about the possibility that Cougar Canyon will garner “Best New Course in America” distinctions.
“When we started studying Trinidad, we saw an old-time mining town with a rich history,” says Nicklaus Design associate Chris Cochran. “Why not design an old-style golf course?” Explore the bunkers on this minimalist, 7,700-yard par 72 with its distant views of the Spanish Peaks and Sangre de Cristos, and you’ll experience a golf journey back in time. “There are only 33 bunkers–nearly a half to a third that’s on most new courses,” Cochran explains. “They are retro—a throwback to the 1920s—and they will remind you of old Seth Raynor bunkers that are deep and penal. Still in most of these bunkers you will be able to hit a mid- to long-iron out of them.”
Sinuous Gray Creek, however, might be the most striking contribution to this rugged layout stippled by piñons, junipers and chollas. Spacious enough to hide outlaws on horseback from a posse, this wash jags along, around and through the fairways, plunging 40 to 50 feet at many points and forcing all kinds of carries off the tees and onto the greens. Most dramatically, this draw forms a natural island green on the 163-yard, par-three 16th, which gets my vote for one of the best one-shotters in the state. The other 17 holes at Cougar Canyon Golf Links don’t disappoint, either. The course begins on flatter land before meandering with gradual climbs in elevation. Your first adventure with the wash comes on the second, a 188-yard par three, as the draw engulfs the rear with two deep bunkers guarding the right side.
Your slightly uphill tee shot at the third, a 575-yard par five, must carry the wash, which then splits the fairway and protects the approach to an hourglass green with bunkers behind it. Not all hazards are obvious. On the 513-yard, par-four fifth, for example, you’ll need to boom a drive along the left side of the super-wide sloping fairway or you’ll be playing your second shot uphill from the right rough.
On the sixth, a 545-yard par five, Fisher’s Peak comes into view. A 9,600-foot, volcanic, basalt-capped mesa that towers over the city, Fisher’s Peak didn’t produce the lightweight, black-lava sand that fills Cougar Canyon’s bunkers, but it certainly provided inspiration for using the silicate, which originates from Capulin, an ancient volcano about 60 miles south in New Mexico.
The seventh, a 418-yard, right-dogleg par four, requires a volcanic but precise drive for any chance at birdie. Opt for a fairway wood off the tee and you might find yourself with a blind shot, as piñons and junipers pinch the fairway into a narrow notch about 160 yards from the green. The slope heads downhill with a pot bunker right, 20 yards from the green.
After contending with Gray Creek on the final two holes of the front nine, you begin the back with the troublesome 10th, a 349-yard, risk-reward par four that heads back up the natural hillside. There’s a lot of movement in the bowled fairway, with a mean natural area too far left. The safe play is to the middle right, avoiding a series of bunkers. A precise tee shot will leave a simple wedge to the elevated green, which has a right-to-left movement.
Don’t let the yawning bunker with a 9-foot face intimidate you on the 262-yard, par-three 11th. Clear it and you’ll get a nice kick onto the punch-bowl green. And don’t look down when you arrive at the back tee on the 602-yard, par-five 12th. A 30-foot drop into Gray Creek is directly in front of it, and the hole itself uses the wash along the left side as its lone hazard. If your drive and approach tightrope along its edge, you’ll have a great chance at birdie.
The ubiquitous draw and some iniquitous bunkers define strategy and the shape of the par fours on 13 and 14. As the routing turns back toward home, the 15th, a straightaway, 674-yard par five, could get a boost from a southerly breeze. Just avoid the cross bunker at the second landing area—it is the nastiest on the course: 10 feet deep.
Take some time to peer down the 30-foot drop in front of the green at 16, that aforementioned 163-yard par three, and you might see cougar tracks in the creek bed amidst the salt cedar bushes.
Seventeen is a 505-yard par four, straight ahead with a pot bunker in the middle and in front of the green. The huge man-made irrigation lake looms in back, fed by the historic Purgatoire River that rolls on the north side of Highway 160. Bunkers are in the rear of the green, and the wash is down the right side. The closing tee shot angles over the lake on a 433-yard par four. The farthest bunker guarding the left side pinches the fairway to a narrow area, and the green sits adjacent to the lake on the right. The difficulty is the two-tiered green—the backbone running from center to back-center.
Even though the back-tees yardage is intimidating for high-handicappers, Cochran says the course was designed for second-home owners who would rather play from about 6,800 yards. “In order to attract people from say, Pueblo, you need some teeth to a new course,” Cochran says. “So we designed a strategic layout where tee-shot positioning is required. It is very playable, but for competitions, all you need is to firm up the greens and grow a little rough.”
“A little rough” might describe the history of Trinidad. Located about 200 miles south of Denver, Trinidad by the mid-1880s was such a popular stop on the Santa Fe Trail that it boasted 33 saloons. Things got so rowdy that lawman Bat Masterson was hired to tone down the hooligans, and some say Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday headed there after the OK Corral gunfight. Even Billy the Kid and Black Jack Ketchum spent time there. By the dawn of the 20th century, the coal-mining industry had flooded Trinidad with so many immigrants that more than two dozen languages were spoken along Main Street.
To those with a vivid imagination, a stroll through the Corazon de Trinidad National Historic District, once humming with the clanging of street cars and the tattooing hooves of mounted cowboys, is an Old West déjà vu, with brick avenues lined with Victorian architecture and a scenic mountain panorama. And just east of that historic tableau, in the development of Cougar Canyon, new fairways are leading Trinidad toward its future.
Contributing editor David R. Holland is author of The Colorado Golf Bible and a former sportswriter for The Dallas Morning News. He writes for four regional golf magazines, one national golf magazine and one international golf magazine.
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Par 72
TEE YARDAGE
Black 7,709 Blue 6,820 White 6,295 Red 5,442