Overlooked Golf Courses: Gold Canyon and others you may not know
By Bill Felber
Colbert Hills, Manhattan, Ks., 7,525 yards, par 72
The last time the United States Golf Association put a major men’s professional championship anywhere in Kansas was …never. Since the organization does not reveal why it chooses not to look at certain locales, we are left to speculate that the general disinterest in the nation’s most central state has to do with proximity to major markets and/or population centers.
Colbert Hills, http://www.colberthills.com/which opened in 2000 in Manhattan, Ks. – about 120 miles west of Kansas City – can’t do anything at this stage about its location. Besides, the course designed by Jim Colbert and Jeffrey Brauer has one other significant drawback: Its 18 holes sit on a 300-acre prairie footprint. For purposes of context, an average course probably imposes about a 180-acre footprint on the landscape.
That means there are impractically lengthy gaps between holes, in places extending hundreds of yards from one green to the next tee box. When pros play tournaments at Colbert, those gaps – atop the often severe elevation changes and the course’s raw 7,500-yard length – compel the use of carts.
The unlikelihood of the USGA ever allowing competitors to use carts in one of its major men’s national championships basically rules out taking a big event to Colbert.
That’s too bad because Colbert Hills glorifies the Kansas prairie landscape in the same way that Pebble Beach glorifies the concept of a seaside course. The vistas along are breathtaking, no more so than from the greatly elevated tee of the 600-yard par 5 seventh hole. At that point on the course, one’s options are to hit away or merely stare off into the miles and miles of rolling farmland visible in all four directions.
The tee is so much in demand for its mere visual characteristics that Colbert’s dining room actually offers a group special: a remote catered dinner service for weddings, reunions or other special occasions set up on the seventh tee itself.
If the seventh is the most eye-catching hole, it may not be the most challenging. That distinction probably falls to the 230-yard par 3 11th, which requires a carry over prairie wasteland, a creek and a yawning trap to a green that’s only about 20 yards deep. It’s laid out at a 45-degree diagonal on a hillside and protected in the back by a dropoff into another creek. Oh, and don’t overlook the ever-present prairie wind, which sweeps virtually uninterrupted across the prairie landscape.
When Chris Millard published “Golf’s 100 Toughest Holes” a few years back, he included the 11th at Colbert alongside the Road Hole at St. Andrews, the 16th at Firestone, the island hole at TPC Sawgrass and the 9th at Trump Turnberry.