Memory of Marty lives on at Marty Sanchez Links de Santa Fe golf course

It was, like most days around these parts, a good day to play golf.

The weather was great one minute, so-so the next and the fairway grass was, as always, lush in some parts and patchy in others.

Lost in thought that particular afternoon were two men sharing time and space at the Santa Fe Country Club. Father and son, they walked along in silence, still reeling from the death of the son, the brother, who seemed to hold it all together.

Just then, a familiar face strolled up and said something neither man has ever forgotten. It was 1992 and the father-son duo was Lee Sanchez Sr. and Lee Sanchez Jr. The familiar face was then-Santa Fe Mayor Sam Pick.

"One day we're going to build a golf course and name it after Marty," Pick said.

"I'll never forget that," said Sanchez Jr. "My brother had died just three days before that, and everything was so fresh. My dad just looked at Sam and said, 'That would be real nice.' I always think about that."

Pick held true to his word as six years later, not all that long after the Bureau of Land Management sold 1,200 acres to the city to help construct the Municipal Recreation Complex, the Marty Sanchez Links de Santa Fe opened for business in 1998.

Nearly 800,000 rounds of golf later, the course is one of the state's premier facilities and one of the top municipal courses in the region.

All this year, the city is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the course's grand opening by offering special events to entice even more people to head out to the wide open expanse of the Municipal Recreation Complex and put golf clubs to good use. Friday's blustery conditions were no deterrent for dozens of patrons to come out for a mid-day ceremony to honor the course's landmark year.

Yet, as time goes on, fewer and fewer people who set sail on the par-72 tract have much of an idea of who Marty Sanchez actually was. The name is now more of a title than a personal identity, his existence now part of a longer title that's printed across the scorecard clipped to the steering wheel of every golf cart.

Ask locals and they simply refer to the course as "Marty," not giving much thought to who the man actually was or what he was about. There is no bronze statue of him out front, no plaque affixed to the side of the building telling his story.

Even the large framed photo of him behind the pro shop counter is a mystery because it doesn't readily identify the man in mid-follow through as being the namesake of the course.

"I guess you have to wonder if anyone really knows who Marty really was," said Sanchez Jr., Marty's oldest sibling and his only brother.

Sanchez was just 25 years old when he died of cancer in 1992. Diagnosed with a football-sized tumor in his torso in November 1991, he was gone by the following March.

It was a shocking, heartbreaking end for a young man who was the social butterfly among friends and family. Women loved him and friends wanted to be around him.

"It happened so fast that, yeah, it was really hard for everyone to kind of process," Lee said. "He fought so hard but he suffered so much. He was in the hospital and he'd sleep all day but be awake at night. He and I would walk around the halls and I'd see how much pain he was in."

Marty Sanchez was born in Santa Fe, the son of a man whose love for golf was passed along at an early age to all four children. By grade school, he was winning tournaments all over the state, and by high school he was a bona fide star for Santa Fe High, earning a scholarship first to New Mexico Junior College and then Western New Mexico University.

After college, he was back in Santa Fe learning the basics of course management when he applied for a job at a paint store to make ends meet. It was during a routine physical that the source of his fatigue was identified as cancer.

He tried to stay optimistic. He and Sanchez Jr. planned a golfing trip to Scottsdale, Ariz., shortly after his diagnosis and the two talked about Marty getting better so he could rejoin his city league basketball team.

"You know, I go out to the course and it's impossible not to see my brother," Sanchez Jr. said. "And it's not because his name is on it. Marty loved being outside, loved the wide open areas where the course is now. Playing on that course like he did at the country club; yeah, he would have really liked that."

Sanchez Jr. paid his brother the ultimate honor when, a year after Marty's death, he named his son after him.

"My wife at the time, she and I weren't really sure if we could have kids and, well, all that happened," Sanchez Jr. said. "I'm a believer in if one life ends, another begins and they're connected. It was an easy decision to name my son after him."

Now the head pro at Paa-Ko Ridge Golf Club in nearby Sandia Park, Sanchez Jr. gets out to "Marty" as often as he can. He missed Friday's ceremony, but his father, 90-year-old Sanchez Sr., was there.

"I guess the longer we go, the less people are going to know about my brother," Sanchez Jr. said. "But that course will always be part of my family."