Red Sky’s ‘wow’ factor keeps bringing golfers back to the Vail Valley

When members of Golfweek’s raters panel assess a course, their grade is based on 10 criteria. The last of those criteria, the walk-in-the-park test, is the most subjective item on the list, but also the most important. It speaks to the visceral emotions golfers experience when they walk off the 18th green. Did they enjoy the experience? Did they find the design memorable? Are they anxious to play it again?

Atlanta-based Golfweek rater Neil Negrin finds himself placing more and more emphasis on the walk-in-the-park criteria. He points to Red Sky Golf Club as one of his favorites on this score.

“It’s way up there at the top,” Negrin said. “There’s nothing around there to bother you. The homes are very spread out, so you never get the feeling of claustrophobia whatsoever, and you don’t feel like everybody is doing their lawn maintenance. You’re up there high, almost every hole has a vista of the valley, so it truly is a walk in the park.

“Obviously, it’s not a walking course. The distance between greens and tees, by necessity, can be lengthy. But the tradeoff is worth it.”

Negrin is one of many Golfweek raters who takes advantage of the direct flights into Eagle County Regional Airport, a 20-minute drive from Red Sky, to play the club’s two courses.

To be sure, Red Sky’s Tom Fazio and Greg Norman courses fare well on all of the ratings criteria. The Fazio Course is No. 1 in Colorado, the Norman Course is No. 4, and both courses show strongly in national rankings.

“I don’t think there’s a setting that can be beat in the Vail Valley or maybe even mountain golf in general,” Red Sky General Manager Andrew Hedrick said. “It’s a unique mountain golf setting spread over 800 acres. The other differentiator is to have 36 holes that are very different from each other in terms of style. If you play the Norman Course one day and go over to Fazio the next day, it’s two totally different experiences.”

The Norman Course is longer but more forgiving off the tee, with gentler green complexes, while the Fazio Course tends to be a target-oriented layout with more contoured greens.

What’s more important, however, are the traits they share. Both were built on a grand scale befitting their setting, unconstrained by any real estate. (There are 87 lots on the property, but as Negrin noted, they have no impact on the golf experience.) Fazio and Norman were given an expansive landscape to build the best possible courses,…