Sand Hollow Resort sits on the high ground above Sand Hollow Reservoir, three miles east of the Hurricane Cliffs and a short drive south of the town of Hurricane. The Championship Course's back nine runs along the rim of the canyon that drops to the red water — the rim holes are the ones that get photographed, and they are why the course consistently ranks in Golfweek's Top 100 resort courses.
The Championship Course on the Rim
John Fought, with Andy Staples, routed the eighteen in 2008. The front nine works through the desert flats — wide fairways, big bunkers, the kind of strategic angles Fought is known for. Then the routing climbs. The back nine runs along the canyon rim above Sand Hollow Reservoir, with several holes whose tee shots play across or alongside the cliff edge. From the championship tees the course stretches to 7,315 yards at par 72; the slope is 137 and the rating 73.7. It plays harder than the number suggests because the wind on the rim is usually doing something.
The Links Nine and the Wee Course
The Links is a 9-hole layout, par 36, sometimes called Sand Hollow's "second course." The fairways and greens are the largest in Utah by reputation — wide-open links-style routing that makes for a faster round and a friendlier introduction to the property. The Wee Course is a short-game-focused nine, par-3 lengths, designed for warm-ups, family rounds, and skill development. Stay-and-Play packages run between the resort lodging and the three layouts.
The Top of the Utah Public List
Multiple Utah golf publications have ranked the Championship Course as the state's best public-access course since it opened. Golfweek has placed it in the national Top 100 resort courses list across most years it has rated it. The course is the closest thing the 435 has to a national-tier public facility — until Black Desert opened in 2022, Sand Hollow was the resort destination that out-of-state golfers planned trips around.
The reservoir below the rim is a Utah State Park — Sand Hollow State Park — and shares a name and a sandstone color with the course. The OHV culture on Sand Mountain across the water and the golf culture on the rim sit together as the two pieces of what Hurricane has become as a destination. For visitors stitching together a Washington County trip, Sand Hollow Championship is usually the round that gets booked first.