Ballyneal Golf & Hunt Club: A remarkable remote destination in eastern Colorado

HOLYOKE, Colo. - Good luck finding and getting on the Ballyneal Golf & Hunt Club, the ballyhooed Tom Doak-designed private club in the middle of nowhere Colorado just a few miles from the Nebraska border.

Our GPS steered us wrong the first time, but it was a just a minor delay to finding the right dirt road leading to this remote golf paradise. Ballyneal is thriving under new ownership. General Manager Dave Hensley said a wait list has formed to join and the club has tightened the belt on outside play. You can attempt to play as a prospective member once in your life, but must be approved after turning in an application.

The club recently added two new four-person cottages this fall to complement the four small lodges already onsite. Last summer, Tom Doak expanded the massive one-acre putting green to create an interesting and informal putting course called the Commons and built the 12-hole Mulligan short course. Holes range from 85 to 180 yards on the Mulligan, where wild greens make for mayhem putting.

Ballyneal, a magnificent par-71 routing of 7,147 yards, remains the draw. The course has no tee markers. You or your caddies choose the tees where the group plays from on any given hole. The scorecard gives only yardage guidelines. The first hole is played between 320 and 382 yards, the second hole 360 to 490 yards and so on. Ballyneal has no slope or rating. In that way, it’s very much a match-play challenge. A sacred club tradition is the loser of any match carries the opponent’s bag from the 18^th green back toward the clubhouse village, no matter if the group has hired caddies or not.

Ballyneal’s terrain is one of a kind. The dunes that pop up out of the dry, windswept Colorado plains are simply mesmerizing. Doak's blow-out bunkers with gnarly edges scar the paths to more demanding greens. The elevations are just enough to give the land personality and tire you out during the walk.

Doak’s love of short par 4s is evident with the seventh, ninth, 12^th and 14^th all playing less than 375 yards from the tips and often closer to 320-350 for most groups. The road to find Ballyneal is long - three-hours-plus from Denver - but the reward is golf bliss if you can gain access for a few memorable days.