A New Mexico experience

Golfing holidays: New Mexico is fast becoming a popular destination for golfers. Reluctantly, Texan Bruce Selcraig reveals its secrets and charms

If you're planning a golf vacation to the States, chances are that you'll wait until a raw week of icepick rain in February to leave and that you'll have your heart set on Florida. And who can blame you? Florida seems so close, and in the depths of winter its sugar-white bunkers beckon like the thongs of Ipanema.

But what if you'd like to leave now, or at least before October, while Florida is still a steaming mosquito shagfest and we Yanks in our designer rain gear have over-run your lovely golf island? I suppose you could go to California's exorbitant Pebble Beach, where the green fee is now one working kidney. Or you could try North Carolina, site of the recent US Open, but until winter its coastal courses are as muggy as Florida's and the state is run by evolution-doubting Bushites who are angry we haven't yet invaded Finland.

So be daring and bold. Go somewhere that even most Americans aren't sure is actually in America, a place with multi-ethnic local culture, tons of rich history, world-class shopping, famous opera, exquisite food, scenery so good it's been used in hundreds of movies and TV commercials, and a four-season climate that is the envy of North America.

Oh, and it has two of America's top 50 golf courses, and another dozen that are so good (yet cheap) that Golfweek magazine just declared the state to have the best public golf in the nation. If you guessed New Mexico, my name is Paddy O'Houlihan.

Yes, New Mexico is one of our 50 states - a very large and square one that's exactly 3,7364 times the size of Ireland, but with half the people and lots more snakes. It's right next to Texas, but many Americans, I joke not, still confuse it with the country of Mexico and so repeatedly ask hotels about water purity and the need for passports. We sweaty Texans who suffer through six-month summers have managed to keep the existence of New Mexico and its low-humidity, high desert mountains somewhat quiet, but the wild international popularity of Santa Fe has undone our best tourism-suppression efforts.

And now our golf secret is slipping out. You see, apparently for decades people in the rest of the United States have just assumed that New Mexico was all furnace-hot prickly desert, much like Arizona, its neighbour to the west, which has many famous desert golf resorts around Scottsdale.

So they assumed, wrongly, that New Mexico was inhospitably hot, and rightly, that it didn't have as many quality courses as Arizona. That's changed. Now they know that northern New Mexico, the best part, is filled with inviting mountains, cold trout streams lined with regal cottonwoods and high-altitude crystalline skies that have inspired artists from Georgia O'Keeffe to designer Ralph Lauren. Its hilly rural roads rumble past tiny plots of squash, beans and green chile peppers, and, as in Ireland, they still chart the history of the land and people, taking you past old acequias, the Spanish-built irrigation ditches from the 1700s, and ruins of the Anasazi people who settled here but mysteriously fled (from drought or invasions?) in the 1100s. And there's more great golf than you have time for.

Let's start with Albuquerque. (That's the Spanish name of a long-dead Mexican viceroy, but you'll want to pronounce it like the locals: Al-buh-ker-kee). New Mexico's largest city has about a half million people and sits at slightly over one mile high at the southern end of the Rocky Mountains, surrounded by Ponderosa pine forests, fragrant desert and lonely Indian reservations. The once-mighty Rio Grande River, now mostly drained by farmers and suburbs, cuts a verdant green ribbon through the heart of town. The river is what attracted the Pueblo Indians centuries ago to this land, and their 19 modern communities, or pueblos, still populate its banks, struggling with issues of poverty, assimilation and the lure of now-legalized casino fortunes.

On the down side, Albuquerque has gnarly traffic and typical urban crime gangs, but it's also got a major university (with 20,000 students), a charming art deco section of downtown that's part of the fabled Route 66, and two golf courses just out of town that are worth your pricey plane ticket.

Forty minutes from the Albuquerque airport is Paa-Ko Ridge Golf Club, which was largely unknown four years ago and is now ranked number 20 in the nation by Golf Digest. Designed by Houston-based architect Ken Dye, the original course and a brand new nine holes sit at 6,500 feet in the cool Sandia Mountains and are cut from pinon-and-juniper forests that harbor fox, deer and elk.

This is calendar golf porn at its best. From the lofty 17th tee box you can sometimes see 60 miles in every direction and parts of five distinct mountain ranges. At this altitude the air is so tissue thin your ball travels about eight per cent farther, while the red-tail hawks above you seem to drift on auto-pilot. Come early to acclimate yourself and soak in the view because it tends to upset newcomers' games. Green fee: $75 on weekdays, $89 weekends, including motorized cart, which you might consider due to the altitude and distance between tees. Telephone 505-281-6000.

Next, drive back through downtown Albuquerque, north of town about 15 miles to the exit (242) for Bernalillo and state highway 550. Head west three miles and you come to the best golf resort in New Mexico, the Hyatt Regency Tamaya Resort & Spa, which is, interestingly, located on an Indian reservation known as the Santa Ana Pueblo. Golf on an Indian reservation? Let me digress . . .

In 1975, Wendell Chino, the irascible autocratic president of the impoverished Mescalero Apache nation in southern New Mexico, gazed upon an alpine meadow and declared that the sacred tribal land was perfectly suited for - oh, the irony - a golf resort. Tribal elders must have wondered what Chino was smoking in his peace pipe. Thirty years ago none of them played golf, and certainly the image of American golf - exclusive, expensive and as white as the North Pole - was as alien to Native American culture as a Puccini opera.

Chino's dream didn't catch on quickly - the nation's second tribal course came 10 years later - but it pioneered what has become one of the most unlikely tourism phenomenons in America, a trail of some three dozen tribal-owned golf courses scattered from Connecticut to California. New Mexico has the most, with eight, and it is these sublime courses that have given New Mexico its deserved reputation for stunning public golf. The best of these tribal courses is the Twin Warriors Golf Club, located at the Hyatt Tamaya Resort, an alluring 500-acre complex of rust-coloured adobe boxes rising out of the high desert, just a Tiger-drive from the lazy Rio Grande. It's the perfect central location for a New Mexico golf orgy which Golf Digest ranks as 49th best in America.

Twin Warriors is surrounded by red-rock iron ore mesas, ancient archaeological sites and the ever-present 10,000-foot Sandia Peak, making it one of America's most photogenic golfscapes. Expect generous fairways, rapid rolling greens and beastly desert rough.

And just a mile from Twin Warriors is its sister course, the 27-hole Santa Ana Golf Club with views of the Rio Grande's forested banks, or bosque. Green fee at Twin Warriors: $145 March to October, $80 after 2 pm, play all day, 505-771-6155. Santa Ana: weekdays $32 walking, play all day, 505-867-9464. Ask about discounts and twilight specials.

Back tracking a bit, if you want to play some great golf within minutes of the Albuquerque airport, there are two great venues, the Isleta Eagle Golf Club (Green fee: weekday $38, 505-869-0950) and the University of New Mexico Championship (South) Course (Green fee: out-of-state residents, $57 weekdays with cart. 505-277-4546).

If you're stuck in Albuquerque, two of its municipal courses, Los Altos and Arroyo del Oso, are also very enjoyable, and there's a sprawling new tribal course at the Sandia Pueblo.

Back on the trail, drive north on Interstate 25 to exit 259. Head west and follow the signs for 15 miles to the remote and recently renovated Pueblo de Cochiti Golf Course, a Robert Trent Jones Jr layout that sits in the reddish cliffs of the Jemez Mountains. Green fees: $39 to $59, with cart. 505-465-2239.

Now you're certainly going to Santa Fe (70 miles north of Albuquerque), one of America's oldest and most interesting cities, but one which constantly struggles to respect its Hispanic and Indian culture without surrendering to Wal-Mart. Santa Fe is a complex, thoroughly American place. The best public course is the Marty Sanchez Links, one of the finest municipal courses in the nation.

More challenging but quite private are two Jack Nicklaus-designed courses just north of town in Las Campanas.

Farther north from Santa Fe, beside the town of Espanola, is yet another celebrated tribal course, the Black Mesa Golf Club on the Santa Clara Pueblo. Voted America's best new affordable golf course in 2003 by Golf Digest, Black Mesa is a stark monument to modern golf design. I like the serenity of the place and its wispy Irish rough. Green fee: $76 with cart all week, 505-747-8946. Last on the Santa Fe Trail would be the Taos Country Club, a public course in the world-famous art community that reveals little from the road but contains lovely views of box canyons and arroyos. Green fee: $52 weekdays without cart, 505-758-7300.

Two other memorable courses are not anywhere near this Albuquerque-Santa Fe axis, but they're marvellous excuses for long fascinating drives. Pinon Hills Golf Club in the far northwest Farmington, beside the Navajo Reservation, was designed by Ken Dye (of Paa-Ko Ridge fame). Inn of the Mountain Gods, just south of Ruidoso, on the Mescalero Apache Reservation, started the tribal golf bonanza in 1975. Recently renovated, it remains one of the best mountain courses in the West and features trout-filled lakes, meadows of purple and gold wild flowers and the occasional romping elk.

When to go: April through November is usually great. In Albuquerque, summer temperatures can get well into the mid-30s, but the humidity is amazingly low. Try playing in the cool mornings. Most courses are open in winter, but high desert weather is very changeable. Always call ahead. Bring sunscreen lotion, lip balm and drink plenty of water at altitude.

About the courses: Bluegrass fairways and quick bentgrass greens virtually everywhere. Always ask about discounts.

Where to eat: New Mexico has the best Mexican food in our hemisphere, thanks to green chiles. Several golf courses have outstanding but fiery breakfast burritos. To soothe the heat, use milk, not water or beer, and when your waitress asks, "green or red?" she's not talking bloomers, but asking your chile preference. Near the Hyatt Tamaya, try the famous Range Café in Bernalillo; or its two Albuquerque locations; In Santa Fe, you'll not go wrong at Geronimo, The Shed, Harry's Roadhouse or Mariscos La Playa.

Bruce Selcraig is a sports writer who lives in Austin, Texas. He writes for the Smithsonian, New York Times and Golf Connoisseur.