As private playgrounds go, Sanctuary is pretty hard to top:
220 acres of Ponderosa pines, prairie grasses, waterfalls, wildlife and a
roller-coaster of a golf course overlooking the front range of the Colorado
Rockies.
Located 20 miles south of Denver, Sanctuary is the exclusive domain of
RE/MAX International co-founders Dave and Gail Liniger. It’s modern in the sense
that Denver-based course architect Jim Engh didn’t hesitate to move dirt and
trees around to fit a course on a site that skeptics said one couldn’t be
accommodated. Yet the look is unspoiled: No homes clutter the surroundings and
the course is flanked by 40,000 acres of protected open space. In other words
it’s … a sanctuary.
Engh calls Sanctuary “the outer edge of the envelope, as far
as the golf experience goes.” By that he means tee shots that fall 100-plus feet
to ribbons of fairway below; dogleg par 5s with thought-provoking multiple
routes to the hole; par 3s that cross chasms of water, rock and scrub brush.
It’s a course befitting an adventurer like Liniger, whose other pursuits include
stock car racing and high-altitude hot-air ballooning.
On the site, Engh’s challenges included flowing cart paths
down grades as steep as 30 percent and routing holes through rock-strewn valleys
while making the terrain look as though it hadn’t been altered. “Sometimes you
have to move a little dirt to save natural features and actually make them look
more natural,” he says.
The 1st tee gets a player’s attention right away. The
604-yard opener begins 185 feet above the landing area. From there, the thrill
ride is on. Framed by a thick stand of pines down the left side, the hole bends
right to a plateau green skirted in front by a pond designed to aid with erosion
and storm runoff—just another of the problem-solving tasks Engh faced.
Another par 5, the 571-yard 4th, exemplifies the strategic
challenges Engh likes to create. Two landing areas await the tee shot—one
defining the “go for it” range—and two second-shot landing areas, marked by gaps
between three successive trees, point the way to the green, should the player
elect to lay up. Engh figures there are at least eight separate routes from tee
to green, “so the whole combination of risk-reward, strategic thinking comes
into play on one single hole.”
And so the escapade goes: a downhill par-3 opener on the back
nine with sweeping views all the way to Pike’s
Peak 40 miles to the south; the driveable-but-dangerous par-4 16th;
the muscular 18th, 438 yards along a fairway that ascends steadily to a plateau
green barely visible from below.
“It’s so much fun for people to play, particularly since most
of them only get to play it once or twice a year,” says head pro Rudy Zupetz.
“It’s just different and out of the ordinary. The holes don’t remind you of any
you’ve played before.”
Underscoring Sanctuary’s uniqueness is the respect given the
wildlife that roam the grounds: Essentially they have free rein of the place.
With more than 150 elk residing on the property, it’s not unusual to find
multiple sets of elk tracks crisscrossing the fairways, especially during mating
season. Deer, coyotes, mountain lions, bobcats and, yes, rattlesnakes also call
Sanctuary home. Several ponds are maintained with aeration systems designed to
support trophy-sized trout, should Liniger or his pals get the notion to drop a
line. “The elk are welcome and the fish are pampered here,” Engh says with a
laugh.
