The 18-hole Championship Course at Sand Hollow Resort, with its astounding sequence of holes along the rim of the Virgin River Gorge, has garnered widespread admiration. However, as residents of the St. George, Utah, area know, the resort’s nine-hole Links Course—laid out by Andy Staples and John Fought on an unassuming rectangle of land near State Route 7—might be even more fun to play. The Championship and Links courses were built concurrently in the mid-aughts, and they opened right as the Recession descended on the golf industry. Both are excellent, but the Links stands out for its walkability and surprisingly authentic rendering of Scottish golf. The soil is sandy, the ground bumpy, and the built features nicely tied in with the surrounding terrain. Usually, desert golf courses that refer to themselves as “links-style” are anything but. The Links at Sand Hollow is a welcome exception.
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Take Note…
Who designed it? A good question. In the initial development phase, Andy Staples was the sole golf architect working with Dave Wilkey, the land owner. Staples completed the routings and plans that earned approval for the courses to move forward. At that point, a new conglomerate joined the ownership group. This conglomerate insisted on bringing in John Fought, a more experienced and better-known architect than Staples. Since Wilkey wanted Staples to remain involved, Fought and Staples worked as co-designers through the rest of the construction process.
One way only. Reversible courses are in fashion now. Tom Doak’s and Dan Hixson’s reversible designs at Forest Dunes and Silvies Valley Ranch, respectively, have earned positive notices. King-Collins’s Crossroads at Palmetto Bluff, which opened earlier this year, has kept the trend alive. Back in the mid-2000s, however, when Andy Staples proposed designing the Links at Sand Hollow to play in opposite directions on alternate days, most of his collaborators found the idea strange, even off-putting. The reversible concept was put permanently to bed when the ownership conglomerate and John Fought came on board.
Maverick comes to town. After Mike Strantz—owner of Maverick Golf Design and designer of Tobacco Road and Caledonia, among other well-regarded courses—passed away at the age of 50 in 2005, his longtime project supervisor Forrest Fezler linked up with John Fought. At Sand Hollow, Fezler worked with Staples, who lived in Hurricane during construction, to lead crews on both the Links and Championship courses. Fezler himself died of brain cancer in 2018.
Eighteen? In conversations with a couple of different employees at Sand Hollow, we heard that there is a general desire to expand the Links Course to 18 holes. If this happens, I hope the design team makes sure the new holes match the existing course’s look and feel.
