Ballyneal Golf and Hunt Club

Ballyneal sits amid the rolling sand dunes of eastern Colorado's high plains near Holyoke, a landscape locals call the chop hills. The vision belonged to Jim O'Neal, who saw links golf in those dunes, and took shape when he and his brother Rupert acquired the ground to complement the family hunt club. In 2002 they hired Tom Doak and Renaissance Golf Design, fresh off the acclaimed Pacific Dunes, whose team spent two years studying and refining a routing before serious construction began. The fescue turf took hold, and the course opened in 2006. Ballyneal embraces a purist ethos: firm ground, fescue framing, no manicured rough, walking only with caddies, and a flexible feel that lets players choose their own routes across the dunes. Quickly celebrated as a benchmark of minimalist, inland links design, it remains one of the most admired modern courses in America.