The cliffs get most of the attention at Sand Hollow Resort. The Championship course runs its astounding sequence of holes along the rim of the Virgin River Gorge, and it is the one that has been photographed again and again and admired far and wide. But the people who live around St. George, Utah, know about the other course, the one on an unassuming rectangle of land near State Route 7. Sand Hollow Links has only nine holes, and it might be even more fun to play. There is nothing dramatic about the setting. The Links gets its charm from the ground itself. The soil is sandy, the ground bumpy, and the built features are so nicely tied in with the surrounding terrain that they seem to belong there. In the desert, "links-style" is usually a hopeful label stuck on something that is anything but. Here the label is earned, and the course offers a surprisingly authentic rendering of Scottish golf. It is also wonderfully walkable, nine holes laid gently on the land, asking only that you come on foot and pay attention to the ground beneath you. The question of who made it is more tangled than the course looks. Andy Staples was there first, the only golf architect working with Dave Wilkey, who owned the land. Staples completed the routings and plans that earned approval for the courses to move forward. Then a new conglomerate joined the ownership group and insisted on bringing in John Fought, a more experienced and better-known architect. Wilkey wanted Staples to remain involved, so the two men worked as co-designers through the rest of construction. Staples lived in Hurricane during those years, staying close to the work as the courses took shape. Staples had another idea that never made it. He proposed that the Links play in opposite directions on alternate days, the same nine holes turning into something new depending on the calendar. Reversible courses are in fashion now, but in the mid-2000s most of his collaborators found the notion strange, even off-putting. When the conglomerate and Fought came on board, the idea was put permanently to bed. It is hard to walk the course today without a passing thought for the version that might have been. The course that exists plays one way only, and it plays that way beautifully. The crews on the ground carried a particular lineage. Forrest Fezler had spent years as project supervisor for Mike Strantz, owner of Maverick Golf Design and the man behind Tobacco Road and Caledonia, among other well-regarded courses. After Strantz died at 50 in 2005, Fezler linked up with Fought, and at Sand Hollow he worked with Staples to lead the crews on both the Links and the Championship course. Fezler died of brain cancer in 2018, and his hands are part of this ground. Both courses were built at the same time in the mid-2000s, and they opened right as the Recession descended on the golf industry. It was a difficult moment to arrive, especially for a modest nine-holer sitting beside a famous neighbor. And yet both are excellent, and the Links has a quiet way of winning over the people who find it. There is talk among the people who work at Sand Hollow of a general desire to expand the Links to eighteen holes. More of it would be welcome. The hope is that any new holes match the look and feel of the existing nine, because what makes this little course special is not its length but its character: a piece of Scotland that somehow took root in the Utah desert.