Red Sky Ranch Golf Club- Tom Fazio Course ☆ Follow

Tom Fazio's design measures 7,116 yards (Par 72) and comprises an 18-hole course at a private membership club with a separate resort golf operation nestled near Vail and Beaver Creek Mountain Resorts and only 20 minutes from the Vail/Eagle County Airport. Members and guests each enjoy their own clubhouse and alternate play daily between the Tom Fazio and Greg Norman courses. The course opened in 2002.

The Fazio course features more elevation change, with the mostly open front nine atop a bluff dotted with hand-planted sage and juniper bushes and the back nine rising in switchback fashion far up a mountain slope through groves of aspen before plunging downhill on the final three holes. Players make their way through open sage covered hills, dense aspen forest and around a highland lake. Fazio's design team has taken particular care to maintain the site's indigenous vegetation, relocating more than 23,000 native plants into nurseries for re-planting throughout the course. The bunkers here are some of Fazio's most elaborate, and the first par 3 is hole seven, with front nine ending with a par 3 and back nine starting with a par 3, showing that terrain dictates the layout in most cases.

The course deftly climbs the terrain without the golfer realizing it's happening. All the uphill holes are shorter, so they don't feel overly penal. The reward for this journey in the high elevations is the final three holes that crash back to earth. The scenery and fun of the closing stretch that plays so dramatically downhill sets the Fazio apart from its sister Norman course.