Four Mile Ranch, which Engh describes as a unique links/mountain/high desert setting. There are no bunkers on the Four Mile course, but coming into play are quite a few north-facing “hogbacks,” described as shale mini-mesas that mimic the surrounding mountains.
Harmony Club owner/developer Byron Collins brought in Engh to design a course not far from where they both attended college at CSU. Engh, who received his degree in landscape architecture, briefly played golf for the Rams and still is a very good player, holding a 2 handicap.
“He’s unique, fun and creative,” Collins said of the 49-year-old Engh. “His work accolades speak for themselves.”
In some respects it was Engh’s personality that sold Collins on Engh being the right guy for the project in Timnath.
“Jim Engh can be a handful ... a mega type-A personality,” Collins said. “He’s not afraid to be ‘all in’” on a project.
Combining courses he’s completed and is still working on, Engh has about 20 course designs to his credit, including several in Asia and one in Ireland. Besides Colorado, he’s designed courses in Michigan (2), North Dakota (where he grew up), Idaho, Arizona, Georgia, Washington and California.
He’s acclaimed nationally and internationally to such a degree that Golf Digest awarded Engh its first Architect of the Year honor, in 2003.
The magazine annually names the best new courses in the U.S. in various categories, and Engh’s layouts are liberally sprinkled throughout the rankings since 1997. Four times, Engh’s courses have been rated No. 1 in categories such as best new private (twice), best new upscale public and best new affordable course. Those four “winners” were Black Rock in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho and the Sanctuary (private), Redlands Mesa (affordable public) and Tullymore in Stanwood, Mich. (upscale public).
In addition, Engh’s courses have drawn several other top 10 “Best New” rankings over the last decade from Golf Digest: two second places, a fifth, a sixth and a seventh.
Golf Digest, in January of this year, noted the four top-rated Engh courses each display “his unique Art Deco style of rhythmic shapes, repetitive lines and relaxing expansiveness. But he can be whimsical, too, with twin pines at Colorado’s Sanctuary posing a field-goal approach shot, and mushroom-like outcroppings that turn a fairway into a pinball machine at Idaho’s Black Rock.”
Like most course architects, Engh is reluctant to reveal his personal favorites among the many projects he’s worked on.
“Do you have kids?” he asks an interviewer who posed a question Engh is asked far too often. “Do you have a favorite?
“I put my heart and soul into every one (of the courses). ... The goal is to have people have fun. To get to that goal you can go through many different paths.”
