This hidden golf gem is stunning and unforgettable (and kind of scary)

My bosses added a subtitle to our new, interesting one list of America’s best golf courses for $100 or less: Where memory meets affordability.

When I first read that it struck me as one thing that is easy to define and another that is not. Affordability can be summed up in a greens fee, after all. But memory? How do you define it? that?

But after a moment I realized that I had things completely backwards. Affordability is the most nebulous concept; what can you afford it is a personal calculation of money, time, value, opportunity, preference, personality. On the contrary, recall is easily demonstrated: What do you remember?

I remember walking through the front gates of Black Mesa Golf Club—a member of our well-known roster—on a crisp, clear New Mexico afternoon in early 2010. I was in the middle of a yearlong odyssey across the United States, living in my car and exploring the country through its golf courses with the free effort to play a round in every state. I had entered New Mexico in mid-January and had already made two serious miscalculations: First, I expected it to be warmer. Second, I thought I could handle a particularly spicy burrito from a hole-in-the-wall restaurant near the southern border. Two temperature errors, one in each direction. But Black Mesa, still a relatively new golf course, highly recommended by the various online opinions I’d read a week ago while wiping WiFi on my laptop from the parking lot of a Holiday Inn Express. (This was the pre-smartphone era, at least for me; creativity was required.) Things were looking up.

At that time Black mesaIts price was different from the $84 it tops now. Lower, to be specific. In the off-season it was even lower. And the afternoon in the off-season was even lower than that. I didn’t have a lot of money so affordability was top of mind. Black Mesa passed that test, even for a broke teenager – I paid twenty or so bucks and was on my way.

I remember what I wore that day because I matched the golf course, but not on purpose. I had slipped a cream-colored sweater from the plastic container into the trunk of my stroller. Dressed in khakis (impressively baggy khakis, I might add, as I just dug out my photos and had some from that day) and set against the sleepy streets, it gave the odd impression that I was playing with sepia tones.

I remember playing alone. This can be a dangerous endeavor because if something goes wrong – you’re playing poorly, you’re on a boring course, you’re worried about something, you’re worried about someone, you’re thinking about work, you’re experiencing regret – there is nothing to disconnect you you. But in the right environment and mindset, there’s something immersive about just immersing yourself in a round of golf. All of you.

I remember the drama of the course itself; I had played in a number of different landscapes up to this point, but nothing like this mountain-desert combination. There were significant elevation changes, bumping from ridges down into valleys. Elevated tee boxes offered views of the landscape, greens set against sandstone walls, fairways between arroyos and rock formations. It was scary. It was attractive. It was extremely fun golf.

I remember the parking lot was almost empty when I arrived and only one truck remained as I made the turn. This belonged to the shop clerk, who was there waiting for me; he suggested that I might like to call him one day. I didn’t want to keep it on hold, but I was having a blast. Because I didn’t have a stroller, it was easy enough for him to leave and me to continue playing, so I encouraged him to stand up. He agreed, with one request: I close the exit gate. Fair deal.

I remember the light and the temperature starting to drop as I made my way onto the back nine. I remember hitting a ball out of line and seeing paw prints in the dirt and wondering what they might belong to. I remember the “beware of rattlesnakes” signs that suddenly took up more of my brain space. And I remember the holes feeling increasingly isolated from each other, which had a disorienting effect; at one point I wondered which way the club actually was.

Maybe that’s why I remember it so vividly, because I was playing well and playing fast and also moving in a state of hyper-vigilance, scanning the ridges for mountain lions as I walked toward my ball. I remember the feeling that an empty golf course is a very, very large place. I remember feeling somewhat scared, but also undeniably alive.

And then I remember being suddenly surprised after hitting my second shot on the 16th. From my memory this is a dramatic uphill par-5, and I had just hit the 3-wood when a red truck roared up the hill; apparently I wasn’t the only one who was nervous about being out there alone. The store clerk was back. He insisted I go in and so I did and we went back to the club.

I remember asking him what was making him nervous, if it was the rattlesnakes or what. And I remember he said something about wild dogs. They, he said, could be bad.

I haven’t been back since. And so, I’m certainly not pretending to be any fan of the Black Mass; just a guy who played a round there in 2010 and left with some lingering feelings. Few solo rounds of golf have been so memorable. And now I’m eager to go back and see how the reality matches the memory. After all, I only played 15 and a half holes…

Dylan Dethier welcomes your comments at dylan_dethier@golf.com. You can also find his book, 18 in America, here.

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Dylan Dethier

Editor of Golf.com

Dylan Dethier is a senior writer for GOLF Magazine/GOLF.com. Resident of Williamstown, Mass. joined GOLF in 2017 after two years of struggling on the mini-tours. Dethier is a graduate of Williams College, where he majored in English, and he is the author of 18 in Americawhich details the year he spent as an 18-year-old living out of his car and golfing in every state.