The sight lines and beauty of ridge cliffs and stone outcroppings are like the Ledges' back nine, only more of it. The par-4 No. 12 is eye candy, with a spectacular stretch of fairway along a drop-off cliff on the left that leads uphill to a green carved alongside a sheer red rock wall.

The fairway and green-side bunkers feature natural red sand and are cut and fingered along beautiful green borders. They're postcards on steroids.

The fairway bunkers are testy and really penalize the errant shot, a trade-off for the wide, forgiving fairways, perhaps as a Band-Aid for the famous Hurricane winds that can move pebbles.

Where most course developers bring out heavy earth-moving equipment, Fought brilliantly used the natural slopes and rich sandy dirt to shape this course. He used small equipment and had workers pick and paint. He delicately plucked out sagebrush and gently shaped the fairways, leaving much of the natural contour of the desert plateaus and its cover.

The result is a look of green wavy grass in huge forgiving fairways that do not always yield a flat lie.

Fought said he moved just 5 percent of the ground to build Sand Hollow, something unheard of. Fought loves the course so much, he did something he rarely does; he invested in the project with his own money.

"It's in my top five right now," said Bobby Casper, host of Real Golf Radio and TV. "Glenwild (Park City) would be at the top, but this is a great layout. I love the holes on the back along the ridge. This is a course for everybody."

After months of hiding the course, not rushing an opening to allow the grass and greens to sink roots deep and fill out, Sand Hollow is now open for the taking, starting Friday.

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E-mail: dharmon@desnews.com