Featured Stop: Albuquerque

If Breaking Bad or, God forbid, Weird Al make up the extent of your Albuquerque knowledge, perhaps it’s time to update the mental files with a few words about an underrated golfing voyage. Because here, there are two highly rated tracks within 1.5 hours, and at New Mexico prices, we’re talking about one of the better weekend-trip values available.

Let’s start with Black Mesa, which jumped 10 spots to No. 85 in Golf Digest’s updated top 100 release. It’s a course that “feels worlds away, flowing through a Martian landscape of buttes, sagebrush dotted ridges and dry arroyos.”

Truth be told, Black Mesa is not that far from civilization, just a half-hour up the road from Santa Fe. But a story in this Dylan Dethier piece drives home its otherworldly feel. A shop attendant doubled back after originally leaving Dethier to finish up a late round alone, insisting that the visitor depart more promptly: “I remember asking what had unnerved him, if it was the rattlesnakes or what,” Dethier writes. “And I remember he said something instead about feral dogs. Those, he said, could be nasty.”

Sitting just outside Albuquerque is 27-hole Paako Ridge, rated higher by Golf Digest at No. 56. It’s a little less rugged, a little less desert, a little more polished, containing wide fairways and sloped greens. It’s also a bit pricier, but at $225 for 18 holes or $325 for all-day play, the cost is about what you’d expect for a golf course of its caliber. And it is of an elite caliber, the “runaway winner for golf in the state,” Golfweek concludes, a Ken Dye design that “will leave you wanting to plan a return visit.”

Travel-wise, direct flights to Santa Fe are limited—but not out of the question—while Albuquerque services most major airlines. Get to either and you’ll find some high-quality golf awaiting.

This piece originally ran in the GTG newsletter. Subscribe here and get the weekly featured stop—plus news on openings, redesigns, and more—in your inbox each Thursday afternoon.