Claudia Laurent
Golf writer, Golf Handicapp · 4 September 2026
This one is different from everything else on this page, because it is real. The Elfego Baca Shootout has been played in Socorro, New Mexico every year since 1960, and it has exactly one hole. The tee is a wooden crate bolted to the summit of Socorro Peak at 7,243 feet, and the target is three miles away and 2,550 feet below on the desert floor. There is no fairway. There is no green. What you are aiming at is a circle of chalk about fifty feet across scuffed into the dirt beside a car park on the New Mexico Tech campus, with a flag stuck in the middle of it, and everything in between is cactus, scree, rattlesnakes, dry watercourses and old mine shafts. You get ten balls and three spotters, and you have to finish with at least one ball still alive. After the tee shot there is no tee at all, so you carry a square of carpet and play every shot off it, with two clubs and nothing else. The thin air at that altitude sends a driver over 600 yards, which sounds like a gift right up until you watch one disappear into a thorn bush nobody will ever find. Most players take between 18 and 21. The record is 9. It is named after Elfego Baca, a nineteen year old who in 1884 held off an armed mob for thirty three hours and walked out without a scratch, which tells you roughly what the tournament thinks of you giving up. The golf lesson buried in it is worth having even at sea level: thin air adds roughly two percent of carry for every thousand feet, so take less club than the number tells you on a mountain course, and expect the ball to run when it lands.
This hole is not real. Like every hole in the collection it was conjured with AI, a golf daydream rather than a course you can go and play. The thousands of courses in the Golf Handicapp app, however, are very real.
This one is make-believe. The thousands of courses in the app are not.
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About the author
Claudia Laurent · Golf writer, Golf Handicapp
Claudia writes about the World Handicap System, golf scoring and getting more from every round for Golf Handicapp. She is a mid-handicap golfer who logs every card, the good ones and the ones she would rather forget.
This image is AI-generated. Published 4 September 2026.
