Fossil Trace Golf Club

Driving up, this public course in the center of Golden, Colo., seems to hold little promise. The locale is a hodgepodge of urban blight, with remains of a 19th-century clay pit mine edged by a high school, juvenile detention center, water park and fast-food joints. Which is why Jim Engh was the perfect architect to design Fossil Trace. His style, with recessed fairways and greens that twist, turn and funnel shots toward the center, dips beneath the urban landscape and places it out of view. What's more, Engh's emotional architecture aims to surprise and delight golfers. The back nine is one-of-a-kind, with the 11th through 15th playing beneath sandstone bluffs and rock monoliths, particularly on the 12th, where walls of fossils split the fairway and hide the green. Even the fishhook par-5 18th, all grass and water and no rock, is intriguing. Any time a course exceeds expectations, it's a fun day of golf.