Tag: Bandon Dunes Golf Resort

Bandon Dunes 25th anniversary: Ben Cowan-Dewar proves the Bandon model works other places

Ben Cowan-Dewar was inspired by Mike Keiser: ‘No one since Old Tom Morris has had more impact.’



(Editor’s note: Bandon Dunes Golf Resort is celebrating its 25th anniversary and Golfweek Travel Editor Jason Lusk put together a comprehensive package for the occasion, complete with Q&As of pivotal people in and around the operation. To see the entire package of stories, click here.)

BANDON, Ore. – Ben Cowan-Dewar, who dreamed of building a far-away golf resort in Nova Scotia, Canada, has learned much by studying Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon.

The Canadian developer has partnered with Mike Keiser on several of the best new golf course properties in recent decades, most notably the two highly ranked courses at Cabot Cape Breton. Cowan-Dewar has in recent years expanded to Scotland, Saint Lucia, Florida and soon western Canada.

Cowan-Dewar spoke with Golfweek about the inspiration and financial backing he derived from Keiser, the developer of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort, which in May celebrates its 25th anniversary. 

How much have Bandon Dunes and Mike Keiser influenced your career?

It would be hard to imagine Bandon having a more profound effect on many people’s lives than it did on mine. When I first went there (in 2001), I was a lover of golf courses who went to this far-off place and played Bandon Dunes and Pacific. I think it gave me the ability to dream, you know. I’ve been dreaming since I was a kid about building a golf course, but I think to see something like that on the coast, it sort of gave me a dream. …

There’s no chance I would have even been able to undertake Cabot 19 years ago had I not seen Bandon. I think Bandon gave me the ability to dream really big dreams. And then Mike, in his partnership and mentorship, really helped fulfill them. It had an absolutely profound effect.

Bandon Dunes Cabot
Bandon Dunes founder Mike Keiser and Cabot founder Ben Cowan-Dewer (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort)

What was your first conversation about Cabot with Mike Keiser like?

We were two years from partnering, and he was busy with trying to get Trails open. And, you know, he said he had bitten off more than he could chew in remote golf. That partly was a natural defense for a man who was probably assaulted on a weekly basis by some young buck who wanted to build a golf course in the middle of nowhere.

At the end of that conversation, which I call a very polite brush-off, he said, “Hey, wait, you’ve got to get more land, because you won’t be able to buy land for a second course (Cabot Cliffs) after the first course (Cabot Links).”

In 2007 he partnered with me and made the dream come true, and from those humble beginnings, we built on that foundation. 

He’s been an exemplar, a mentor, a partner, a father figure, and I’ve been blessed to know him.

Is it fair to say that no other modern golf developers had the impact that Mike has had? 

I would say, not even close. I would go further than that to say no one since Old Tom Morris has had more impact.

It’s been only 25 years, and if you think about Barnbougle (in Tasmania, and in which Keiser invested before it opened in 2004), and you think about Cabot, those were two that he was directly related to early on. Then you think about all of the other stuff that’s been built in that period of time since. 

I just can’t think of anybody else. You said “modern” but I would drop the modern and just say, who’s had a greater impact on golf development in history? I can’t think of anybody. 

What are some main lessons you’ve learned from Bandon or Keiser?

I have a book of what I call my Keiserisms. Mike has this unbelievable ability to make things seem very simple, even if they are anything but. I think when you have the success that he has – he’s had two very different types of businesses (golf and greeting cards), and he’s been a global leader in two different sectors. Some of that is getting people to follow you, and he has that in spades, but he just has so many really simple truisms. 

One of my favorites is to do what you say you’re going to do, when you say you’re going do it. That means if you say you’re going to have something on Tuesday, you don’t wait and have it on Wednesday. Well, that sounds pretty simple but it’s a hard thing to live by.

Simply being someone that people want to work for, to me that is one of his greatest hallmarks. You see that with all of the great architects in the world that have lined up and wanted to work with him. 

And he just has the ability to draw the very best out of people. 

Bandon Dunes Cabot
Mike Keiser was an early investor in Cabot in Nova Scotia, Canada (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort)

So many developers and courses have tried to follow the Bandon model, but few have been able to pull it off as well. What do they miss? 

I think there’s a couple of things. One, Mike said at Cabot in the early days that Cabot will be different than Bandon in 20 ways, he just didn’t know which 20 ways yet. For a man that had done the impossible at Bandon, he wasn’t trying to carbon copy it and say this is a franchise model.

And so I think whenever you’re trying to copy an original, it’s probably pretty hard. He had the original, and he didn’t go and try and copy it. He tried to make everything authentic to the locations he worked in.

He obviously focused on a couple of really key ingredients, but I think like any really good business that is consumer-facing, it’s really about delivering to your customer the very best product you can. People can lose sight of that and have their own vision, and it’s just not as customer-centric as Mike would be in his business.

What’s it like to play golf with Mike? 

He’s fast. He’s good a player too, but he’s fast more than he’s good. And that suited me quite well. He is competitive, and he loves the competition, but above all else he is fast.

On the opening day of Cabot, we stood on the first tee and saw every golfer tee off, like he has done at Bandon. So we didn’t get to play until the next morning. 

The next morning we were playing with the premier of Nova Scotia – for you, he was the equivalent of a governor – and Mike told the premier, let’s play at 8. And Mike was on the tee at 7:41, and he said, “Do we need to wait for him?” I said, “Well, he is the premier.” Mike’s ball was in the air before 8, and the premier was running down to meet us having seen us out his window. So speed trumps all.

Bandon Dunes 25th anniversary: Say hi to Shoe, the resort’s director of outside happiness

Rain or shine, Shoe will be beat you to the parking lot any day as director of outside happiness at Bandon Dunes.


(Editor’s note: Bandon Dunes Golf Resort is celebrating its 25th anniversary and Golfweek Travel Editor Jason Lusk put together a comprehensive package for the occasion, complete with Q&As of pivotal people in and around the operation. To see the entire package of stories, click here.)

BANDON, Ore. – A former UPS and semi-tractor driver who had lived in the area for decades, Bob Gaspar arrived at Bandon Dunes Golf resort in the 1990s to make a delivery before the resort opened. He fell in love with the place.

Gaspar quickly jumped at the chance to switch careers when offered a job by the resort’s first general manager, Josh Lesnick. Starting as caddie master, he transitioned to outside services, earning his title as director of outside happiness.

Handed the nickname Shoe by a former Golfweek editor, Gaspar handles plenty of golf bags flowing through the resort, but more importantly perhaps, he studies the guest list daily to better welcome players from around the world – he often arrives not long after midnight to read up on who is playing that day.

He provides a daily weather report via X (formerly Twitter; check him out @GolfShoeBandon), and many guests make it a point to snap a selfie with Shoe. He took the time to speak with Golfweek in the run-up to the resort’s 25th anniversary.

Bob “Shoe” Gaspar has been an employee since before the resort opened 25 years ago. (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort)

What was it like when you first came out to Bandon Dunes? 

I was probably the epitome of a gofer, you know. “Shoe, could you go here? Shoe, can you do this?” To me it was just fun. 

When it first appeared in the local Bandon paper that a Chicago businessman by the name of Mike Keiser was going to do us a huge favor by building a golf course out here, to a man everybody just said, “No, you know that’s not going to work. Who’s gonna come?”

But we were thinking small, you know, and Mr. Keiser thinks worldwide. He proved the world wrong, I’ll guarantee you. … He’s a brilliant person, first of all, and he’s never been much for small talk. He’s always watching, looking to see what the guest needs, what else can we do that will make their visit exceptional. 

How did the nickname Shoe come about? 

That came about in 1998. Josh Lesnick was acquainted with one of the writers, (longtime Golfweek columnist) Jeff Rude, so Josh invited him down since they were in this part of the country. The course was just playable and we weren’t open yet, and Jeff came down with three or four other writers. 

(Longtime Golfweek editor) Dave Seanor was with them, also. They pulled up on a sand dune in a van, and I went to meet them. Dave jumped out first, looked at me and he said, “You remind me of jockey Bill Shoemaker.” So from that day on they started calling me Shoe. 

It would have died out, but Josh wouldn’t let it go. There was a house that came with the property, and it was a design center where all the work was done. They took out the water heater that was in there, and it was a small little closet thing, and Josh said to me, “There’s your office.” And he nailed a shoe above it. So basically the rest is just history. 

How did your Twitter handle come about, and giving the weather ratings?

Once again, Mr. Keiser. I didn’t know anything about Twitter. One day, I think it was seven or eight years ago, he said, “Shoe, you ever thought about being on Twitter?” And I said, no. He said, “Why don’t you think about it, and why don’t you think about tweeting the weather every day?” 

Weather’s been real important to me ever since opening day. The first car pulled up, the door opened up and before the foot hit the ground, it was, “What’s the weather gonna do today?”

My rating score is based on wind and rain; it has nothing to do with the sun. If the sun never shines here and the wind is 4 to 5 mph, that would be a great day. It’s a playability number, in other words. I do it on a scale of zero to 10. I’ve never given a zero and I’ll never give a 10, because nothing’s perfect.

Bandon Dunes 25th anniversary: A step back in time to the first Bandon story by Golfweek

Golfweek first wrote about Bandon Dunes Golf Resort the year before it opened. Check out the story to see if we got things right.


Golfweek got its first look at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in 1998, when several writers visited before the first of what has become five courses even officially opened. Dave Seanor, Golfweek’s editor at the time, wrote the first national story on the new course.

The next year, Golfweek put Bandon Dunes on the magazine cover in March, two months before the grand opening, and described the layout as among the top 10 courses in the U.S. The accolades have been coming ever since.

For more details on the development of Bandon Dunes, check out developer Mike Keiser’s most recent book, “The Nature of the Game.” And keep scrolling for Seanor’s story that served as an introduction for so many to Bandon Dunes.

With the resort celebrating its 25th anniversary, Golfweek Travel Editor Jason Lusk put together a comprehensive package for the occasion, complete with Q&As of pivotal people in and around the operation. To see the entire package of stories, click here.

Picture a cross between Pebble Beach and Carnoustie – with a pinch of Pine Valley for good measure – and you have Bandon Dunes. Tentatively set to open next May, the new resort in Bandon, Oregon, already has previewers rating it as a “must-play” destination for the golf purist.

Owner Mike Keiser, a Chicagoan with a passion for golf in the Scottish tradition, imported architect David McLay Kidd of Gleneagles, Scotland, and gave him the run of 2,500 virgin acres to design only his second golf course. Not since the golden age of course construction in the 1920s has a Scottish designer left such a striking impact on American soil. Architecturally precocious at 30, Kidd created a masterpiece that’s evocative of the great links courses of his native land.

Bandon Dunes sits atop a bluff that commands a seemingly endless stretch of pristine Pacific Ocean beach. The routing meshes naturally with the existing duneland terrain; Keiser insisted that a minimum of earth be moved during construction. There is no water on the links of Bandon, although six holes abut the Pacific.

Sod-faced bunkers bring to mind Carnoustie. Wind can wreak havoc, especially on the par 3s – three of which have arresting ocean backdrops. Greens and chipping areas are configured to reward the creative ground game. Fairways are magnanimous for the resort player, but with strategically placed bunkers that provoke indecision on the tee. Stray from the short stuff, and the golfer must grapple with Scottish-like gorse and whins.

More memorable that the risks are the rewards. Stand over a putt, and the only sound is the crashing of waves. A 36-hole walk is paradise, not purgatory. And walk you must. At Bandon Dunes, which eventually will have 54 holes, caddies are the rule, not the exception.

Accommodations will include 20 suites in the clubhouse complex and between 30 and 40 cottages out of sight of the golf course.

For more details, call Bandon Dunes at 541/347-4380.

Must-see video: Bandon Dunes’ new par-3 course, Shorty’s, opens in May

Already home to one of the best par-3 courses, Bandon Dunes will open a new layout on wild dunes.

Bandon Dunes Golf Resort, to a large degree, reinvigorated par-3 courses at resorts around the U.S. – and the world. The Oregon resort’s Preserve – opened in 2012 with a design by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw on cliffs above the Pacific Ocean – has proved to be a massive hit with guests looking for a non-traditional layout that promises plenty of fun. All five of the 18-hole courses on the property are among our top 11 resort courses on the Golfweek’s Best 2024 list.

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In May, the Preserve will have a sibling. Bandon Dunes’ new 19-hole par-3 course, named Shorty’s, will open in wild dunes not far from Bandon Trails. Built by the WAC Golf team of Rod Whitman, Dave Axland and Keith Cutten, the layout will play down a large hill, around and through the dunes and back up to a new clubhouse. Holes will range from 60 to 160 yards.

Check out the accompanying video to learn more:

Golfweek’s Best 2023: Top 40 par-3, short and non-traditional courses in the U.S.

Our inaugural list of best par-3, short and non-traditional courses in the U.S. includes a bit of everything.

What makes a great short course? We posed that question to our huge network of course raters to establish the first Golfweek’s Best ranking of non-traditional courses in the United States. 

We included par-3 courses as well as short courses that might have a few par 4s and even par 5s. Some are crazy, over-the-top fun meant to be played barefoot with a cold drink in hand. Others are more traditional in their design. They might be at an elite private club, or they might be a muni down the street. There might be 18 holes, or there might be only six — who cares when you’re having a blast?

Basically, they all fit the bill of not being a traditional-length, traditional-par course. And just like the best short courses, we threw out some of the rules used for rating traditional courses and asked the raters to submit one overall score for each course based on how much they enjoyed the design and the environment. Those individual ratings were then combined to form one average rating, which is listed for each course. Each course had to receive a minimum number of 10 votes, and there are several other great short courses that likely will make this list when they receive enough votes. We received nearly a thousand ballots in all for this inaugural list.

Pinehurst Cradle
The Cradle at Pinehurst Resort in North Carolina (Courtesy of Pinehurst Resort)

And as for how we decided which courses fit the bill: All of these would be shorter than 2,700 yards if they were nine holes, compared to a traditional course typically being made up of nines measuring 3,100 to 3,800 yards. Short courses, particularly the public-access variety, are the most welcoming of all golf — everyone can take their shot. 

And there’s more to come. Streamsong Resort in Florida is adding a new short course this fall called The Chain, and the newly renovated Cabot Citrus Farms (formerly World Woods) in Florida also will have one named The 21 when the resort opens in December. Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon, already home to one of the best short courses in the world, is adding another. There’s no end in sight for fresh additions.

One note: Many courses have also added large putting courses, but those are not included on this list.

For this list, we included each course’s rating on a points scale of 1 to 10. We also included their locations, the designers, the year they opened, the number of holes, the total length and the par. At the end of each entry, the letter “p” indicates a private club, “d” indicates daily fee and “r” indicates a resort.

10 U.S. destinations with three or more top-ranked resort courses

10 destinations have three or more highly ranked courses on Golfweek’s Best Top 200 Resort Courses list.

What do you really want in a golf trip? If your answer is golf, golf, then more golf in one spot, sometimes followed by a wee bit of extra golf, we have you covered.

Golfweek’s Best ranks courses around the world by various categories, ranging from modern courses to the best in each state. One of our most popular rankings is the top 200 resort courses in the U.S.

Any of the layouts on the list would make for a great getaway. More than three dozen resorts have two courses on the list, always begging for a comparison between layouts over a nice cold drink and dinner after a full day of golf.

But if you’re looking for more, keep reading. Because 10 resorts are home to three or more courses on Golfweek’s Best ranking of top resorts in the U.S. From coastal Oregon to inland Florida, these destinations have the holes — and the pedigrees — to keep golfers swinging for days.

Pinehurst No. 4
Pinehurst No. 4 (Courtesy of Pinehurst Resort)

Six of these resorts have three courses ranked among the top 200. They are Big Cedar Lodge in Missouri, Firestone Country Club in Ohio, Pebble Beach Resorts in California, the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail in Alabama, Sea Pines in South Carolina and Streamsong in Florida.

Two of these are not traditional resorts. The first is Firestone, which for the most part is a private members club. But Firestone offers stay-and-play packages open to the public. That qualifies it as a resort based on Golfweek’s Best standards in which any course that offers tee times to the public, even if the club is mostly a private facility, is deemed to be public-access.

The other in question is the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail, which offers golf at 11 sites around the state. Because all the facilities are managed under one umbrella and offer great opportunities to bounce from one site to another with relative ease, we opted to include the Trail on this list.

Next up are the resorts with four courses ranked among the top 200 — rarefied air. They are Destination Kohler in Wisconsin (Whistling Straits and Blackwolf Run are two clubs, each with two courses, that are part of one resort) and Reynolds Lake Oconee in Georgia, which is a sprawling resort and residential community.

Only two resorts in the U.S. have five courses among the top 200 in the U.S.: Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon and Pinehurst Resort in North Carolina. Both of them are bucket-list destinations that every golfer should see, hopefully more than once. They offer all the golf most players would ever want on one vacation — playing one round on each course would take days, and one round on each course is never enough.

The resorts with three or more ranked courses have gone about their development in multiple ways. Some were established more than a century ago and have added courses through the decades — these resorts often feature courses designed by multiple architects, offering an array of styles and architectural features. Others feature several courses by one designer, with the resorts sticking with the architects who proved to work best for them.

Either way, you can’t go wrong with a trip to any of these locations listed on the following pages. Included for each resort are its top-200 courses listed with their average rating on a scale of 1 to 10 as assigned by Golfweek’s Best rater program, their designers, the years they opened and their rankings on various Golfweek’s Best lists. We hope you enjoy perusing these elite resorts, both on these pages and in real life.

And it’s worth noting, there is one more resort destination that is very likely to join this list of 10 in the coming years. Pine Needles in North Carolina, not far from Pinehurst Resort, operates three courses, two of which are on the 2023 list of top 200 resorts: Pine Needles (No. 47) and Mid Pines (T-35). The company’s third course, the recently renovated Southern Pines, didn’t have the requisite number of votes to qualify for this year’s list but is almost a lock to appear on the list in upcoming years.

Photos: Bandon Dunes building new par-3 course on stunning dunes alongside Pacific Ocean

Bandon Dunes Golf Resort has broken ground on a new par-3 course on incredible terrain between Bandon Trails and the Pacific Ocean.

Bandon Preserve, the 13-hole par-3 course that opened in 2012 at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon, ushered in a trend of high-end resorts adding short courses that far exceed the experience of many afterthought par-3 layouts that came in preceding decades. Real holes on stunning terrain make for an unforgettable experience that has become a major draw along the southern Oregon coast, and a new breed of par-3 course has evolved around the world.

And Bandon Preserve will soon have a sibling just a few hundred yards south along the coastline.

The resort officially announces today that it is constructing a new, 19-hole par-3 course, yet to be named and built by the WAC Golf team of Rod Whitman, Dave Axland and Keith Cutten. The layout was routed on dunesland between the first hole of the resort’s Bandon Trails course and the Pacific Ocean, and construction is already underway. Plans are for the course to be completed this year, with some preview play possible this fall and a full opening in 2024.

Bandon Dunes
The layout for Bandon Dunes Golf Resort’s new par-3 course between the first hole of Bandon Trails and the Pacific Ocean (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort)

“This is just an incredible piece of ground, and we’re super excited about it,” said Cutten, the youngest member of the WAC design team who has worked in various roles with Whitman and Axland for more than a decade, most notably at Cabot Links in Nova Scotia, one of the top-rated public-access courses in Canada. “It’s quite a bit choppier, more severe changes in the dunes than some of the other pieces of ground out there, so it’s just perfect for a short course.”

The layout of Bandon’s new par-3 course has been in consideration for years, and architect Tom Doak had marker flags in the ground for a proposed routing last year. Bandon Dunes founder and owner Mike Keiser said plans changed, and the WAC team was given a chance to create a layout on what Keiser always believed to be a special piece of land.

“We called and said, ‘Why don’t you stop by and see what you can do?’ ” Keiser said. “They came up with, I think, a brilliant routing. I wouldn’t call it short, because our scorecard will have short, medium and long distances. They did a fabulous job and you’ll have to wait and see for yourself.”

Holes will range from just under 60 yards up to nearly 160, depending on the tees selected, Cutten said. Keiser said the plan is for each of the 19 holes to offer a chance to tee off with a putter, at least from the forward tees.

The layout will consist of 16 acres of maintained turf across lumpy, bumpy and sandy dunes, into and out of various natural bowls and across ridges. Cutten said the terrain was perfect for a par-3 course because there was no need to design landing areas for tee shots on par 4s and 5s, allowing the design team to instead focus on finding the most interesting and natural green sites full of interesting bounces and rolls.

“I think all but one of our greens were basically just sitting there” on the ground already, Cutten said. “The one (that’s not) that I’m referring to, the 10th, needs a little bit of sand in the middle but the edges are already there, so it looks like it’s already there. The rest of the greens are just found.”

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The original WAC routing was 12 holes, but Cullen said the team kept finding interesting green sites and possibilities for additional holes. They finally settled on 18, playing down toward the ocean then back up in a series of loops. Keiser then added a 19th hole.

“It was 18 holes, and I was just out there with my son Chris, and we decided the walk from 18 up to the clubhouse was too arduous,” Keiser said of the process with his son, who along with brother Michael operates Sand Valley resort in Wisconsin. “So we put in another par 3 as the 19th hole there to take us back up to the great clubhouse site.”

Keiser said his one mandate is that each hole can stand on its own and would fit well on any of the resort’s five 18-hole layouts that rank among the best modern courses in the world. Cutten said that was no problem on terrain so naturally suited to golf.

Keith Cutten (from left), Dave Axland, Rod Whitman, Chris Keiser and Mike Keiser at the site of the new par-3 course at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort)

“It became a running joke as we toured Mr. Keiser around that we should be paying him for the golf course, because all the work was already done,” Cutten said. “It speaks well to the quality of the ground and the kind of golf we were able to put on it. …

“On a short course, you can get a little more bold with the decisions you’re making and the contours you’re using. A lot of the times the short courses can be a little more funky and dynamic and quirky, a lot of the things we try to do with our golf courses from the get-go.”

Keiser said he isn’t sure yet what that clubhouse will look like, possibly a “glorified mobile home.” Don’t be surprised if he decides to include some sort of food truck, a version of which has proved incredibly popular at Sand Valley’s par-3 course named the Sandbox.

Keiser anticipates the new course, which will raise the total number of par 3s at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort to 53, will complement the Preserve, designed by the team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw. The resort is also home to Shorty’s, a nine-hole par-3 course at the practice facility that is open only at select times.

“I think most people who have time will play both of them,” he said. “We’ll have to wait to see which they favor, but Preserve is awfully good, as is this new one.”

Keiser said that like the Preserve, the green fee will be $100, with all proceeds benefiting the Wild Rivers Coast Alliance to support communities along the southern coast of Oregon. The resort has contributed $7.3 million to the WRCA, with the Preserve now generating $800,000 a year for the charity.

Golfweek’s Best 2022: Top public and private courses in Oregon

One resort dominates the rankings of best public-access golf courses in Oregon.

Bandon Dunes Golf Resort dominates the top of the Golfweek’s Best public-access course rankings in Oregon, with layouts designed by Tom Doak (Pacific Dunes, Old Macdonald), Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw (Bandon Trails, Sheep Ranch) and David McLay Kidd (Bandon Dunes). No other destination in the United States offers so many highly ranked layouts as Bandon Dunes.

Golfweek’s Best offers many lists of course rankings, with that of top public-access courses in each state among the most popular. All the courses on this list allow public access in some fashion, be it standard daily green fees, through a resort or by staying at an affiliated hotel. If there’s a will, there’s a tee time.

Also popular are the Golfweek’s Best rankings of top private courses in each state, and that list for Oregon’s private offerings is likewise included below.

MORE: Best Modern | Best Classic | Top 200 Resort | Top 200 Residential | Top 100 Best You Can Play

(m): Modern course, built in or after 1960
(c): Classic course, built before 1960

Note: If there is a number in the parenthesis with the m or c, that indicates where that course ranks among Golfweek’s Best top 200 modern or classic courses. 

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Want to play golf at a top U.S. resort? Many courses are packed, so start planning early.

Resorts are seeing incredible demand from players ready to hit the road.

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Want a September or October tee time at one of the top golf resorts in the U.S.? Maybe take a foursome to Pebble Beach, Bandon Dunes or any of a handful of bucket-list destinations? You had better book now.

And that’s for 2022.

At many resorts, you can forget about scoring multiple, prime tee times in the fall of 2021. You might be able to get out as a single, and you might even have luck finding a midweek slot for a foursome. Hoping to book a big buddies trip for multiple weekend days anytime over the next three months? Best of luck to you, and plan to cast a wide net.

Many industry observers and managers report that demand for tee times hasn’t been this high in more than a decade, since before the market crash of 2008. With an increasing number of Americans returning to recreational travel after COVID-19 restrictions have eased or ceased, many top golf resorts are packed.

Rounds of golf played in the U.S. surged in the second half of 2020 as golf was seen as a relatively safe activity during COVID-19 lockdowns, and that growth extended into the early months of 2021. June was considered to be a great test of sustained growth, as June 2020 saw a 13.9-percent increase in year-over-year rounds played nationwide versus June 2019, according to the National Golf Foundation and market-research company Golf Datatech. Could that kind of interest in golf be maintained into 2021? The answer is yes, as June 2021 saw a slight increase of 0.4 percent over June 2020. It appears, at least for now, that increased interest in golf might be a new normal.

It follows a tough year for many resorts, some of which were forced to shutter their courses early in the pandemic. When play resumed, many potential guests were understandably hesitant to travel. But now, just more than a year after they fully reopened and with players champing at the bit to play highly rated courses, many of these resorts are booming.

Spyglass Hill at Pebble Beach in California (Courtesy of Pebble Beach Resorts)

“Golf already had a tailwind because of COVID, and then you had people cooped up for the better part of a year, and now people are looking to get out, explore, play golf, take vacations,” said Aaron Flink, the executive vice president and chief strategy officer at Pebble Beach Resorts in California, home to Pebble Beach Golf Links, Spyglass Hill Golf Course and the Links at Spanish Bay. “It’s been nice to see that rebound, nice to see people on property again, and nice to see our hotels and golf courses full.”

Pebble Beach is running on its website a warning about limited availability and long wait times for booking calls. The resort’s main three courses are each inside the top 100 on Golfweek’s Best list of top resort courses in the country, including No. 1 Pebble Beach Golf Links. Flink said that famous course – host of six previous U.S. Opens – never has a real lack of players on its tee sheet. But even with that in consideration, the course – which Flink said typically hosts more than 60,000 rounds a year – is having its busiest season since the 2008 recession. The resort is also home to a newly renovated short course, the Hay, which features a design by Tiger Woods.

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“We keep telling people, if you want to come to Pebble, get your trip booked now,” Flink said. “If you want to be here in the summer or fall, now is the time to start your planning for ’22.”

The resort operates 495 guest rooms in its three hotels – The Lodge at Pebble Beach, The Inn at Spanish Bay and Casa Palmero – enough to accommodate all the players at its three main courses. But availability in one of those rooms with an accompanying weekend tee time is extremely limited, based on the resort’s online booking calendar.

One open spot is around the winter holidays. There are rooms available the last two weeks of 2021 and first two weeks of 2022, and Flink said the resort’s location on the Pacific Ocean provides reasonable and consistent winter weather. The period from December 22 to January 5 might be the best option to play Pebble Beach for months.

Calling it a “post-COVID gold rush,” Flink said all the demand for rounds at the resort’s three main 18s includes an increased percentage of first-time guests. And it’s almost entirely domestic travelers filling the tee sheets – in a normal year Pebble Beach might have 10 percent or slightly more of its guests from other countries, Flink said, but now the resort is drawing almost entirely U.S.-based players. If international recreational travel picks up, demand at Pebble Beach is likely to spike even higher.

Bandon Dunes Sheep Ranch
The new Sheep Ranch at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes)

It’s a similar story up the Pacific coast at another top golf destination, Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon. Like Pebble Beach, Bandon Dunes has on its website a warning about extremely high call volumes from people looking to books golf vacations. Bandon Dunes is home to five of the top 10 courses on Golfweek’s best list of top resort layouts in the U.S.

“We’re experiencing record-breaking occupancy rates and golf rounds throughout 2021, even with the addition of 24 new guest rooms that we opened on August 1,” said Don Crowe, general manager of Bandon Dunes. “This demand continues into 2022 based on early booking trends and high call volume in our reservations department. For larger groups with multiple night stays, we recommend that groups start the booking process at least a year in advance.”

The same is happening around the country at top resorts. For a Midwest example, Destination Kohler in Wisconsin – host of this month’s Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits and home to four top-ranked courses in all – is running a website warning about unprecedented call volume and advising guests to use its new online booking system.

Streamsong Red in Florida (Courtesy of Streamsong/Laurence Lambrecht)

The same is true in the Southeast. Craig Falanga, the director of sales and marketing at Streamsong Resort in Florida, said that destination’s three courses already are experiencing strong demand for April of 2022, following month after month of record amounts of play. Streamsong is home to three courses – the Red, Blue and Black – that all rank inside the top 25 on Golfweek’s Best resort courses list.

“I would definitely agree with you that people need to book earlier than they might normally as buddy golf trips seem to be more popular than ever,” Falanga said in an email.

The message is clear: If you want to take a group of players to a top golf destination with great accommodations in 2022, you need to plan now.

Bandon Dunes founder Mike Keiser has plans for not one, but two new courses along the Oregon Coast

If approved, Tom Doak will build a par-3 course at Bandon Dunes and David McLay Kidd will build the 18-hole course near the coast.

A year after the Sheep Ranch opened at his Bandon Dunes Golf Resort, golf developer Mike Keiser has the itch to start building even more courses along the Oregon coast.

Next up for Keiser is a new 18-hole public-access layout on the opposite side of the town of Bandon named New River Dunes, which will be designed by David McLay Kidd, plus a new par-3 course designed by Tom Doak at the main resort.

Both are in the early stages as Keiser, plus his sons Michael and Chris, navigate state and sometimes federal permitting processes. There is no schedule for when a shovel might be stuck in the ground to start construction.

Keiser said demand for tee times at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort has convinced him to add more holes.

“The bureaucratic ball is beginning to roll,” said Keiser, who made his fortune in greeting cards and who has been credited by many in the golf industry as an agent of change in how modern resorts are built. “Michael, Chris and I did decide that given the demand of the five original courses (at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort) plus the two short courses, we would endeavor to do two new courses, one 18 and one par-3. We’ve just begun the process of getting approvals on both of those, so they’re not really live. And you never know with approvals whether it will be forthcoming or whether they will demand changes or who knows what.”

Bandon Dunes Sheep Ranch
The new Sheep Ranch at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes)

Bandon Dunes is the top golf resort in the country, based on volume of great courses that have climbed the Golfweek’s Best rankings of resort layouts. Each of the resort’s current full-size layouts – Bandon Dunes, Pacific Dunes, Bandon Trails, Old Macdonald and the new Sheep Ranch – ranks among the top 15 in Golfweek’s Best list of Modern Courses built since 1960. They rank Nos. 1-5 among Oregon’s public-access courses. The resort’s current short courses include the 13-hole, par-3 Bandon Preserve, and Shorty’s, a nine-hole par-3 course built into the practice range.

All those courses have been jampacked since COVID restrictions began to ease midway through 2020. And demand for tee times likely will continue to grow as the resort becomes even more famous – the USGA announced Tuesday that it will conduct 13 national championships at Bandon Dunes through 2045 on the heels of a successful U.S. Amateur there in 2020.

If all bureaucratic hurdles are cleared, Doak’s par-3 course likely will be the first addition to the resort’s lineup. Keiser said the layout will be on land near the second hole of Bandon Trails, not far from the par-3 Bandon Preserve and along the coast south of the original Bandon Dunes course. A name has not been formalized, but Keiser is excited at the prospect of the new short course by the designer of the resort’s Pacific Dunes layout, which ranks as the No. 2 modern course in the United States.

“Competition is good, isn’t it?” he said. “Let’s see what Tom Doak has up his sleeve.”

Bandon Dunes Pacific Dunes
Tom Doak designed Pacific Dunes (pictured) at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon, and he has landed the job to build a new par-3 course at the resort if permitting is approved. (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes)

The second project, the 18-hole New River Dunes layout, is the resumption of a plan Keiser had more than a decade ago. He owned what he describes as a superlative piece of golfing terrain south of town, and he worked with state officials for eight years on a land swap to expand his contiguous holdings to accommodate a 27-hole course.

But after reaching agreements with the state, complications with the federal Bureau of Land Management – and its ability to possibly reclaim the swapped land – halted the project in 2015. Keiser’s interest shifted to other projects, such as Sand Valley in Wisconsin and the under-construction Cabot Saint Lucia in the Caribbean, which is slated to open in 2022.

Keiser is now ready to resume the project with just 18 holes on land he already owns, making for far fewer headaches in the approval process than if he had stuck with original plans for 27 holes.

“In hindsight, that was a mistake,” Keiser said. “I should have said, ok, not 27, we’ll build 18. But I was so wed with 27. I sort of got stuck in that box.”

Mike Keiser, owner of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort (Golfweek files)

Keiser described the proposed layout as playing down valleys between giant dunes, not directly on the coastline but possibly with several views of the ocean, depending on how the layout is finalized.

“The dunes at this site are just unbelievable,” Keiser said. “So there’s this dune on the right, which is 80 feet, and it’s a dune on the left which is 100 feet, and there is a perfect valley for golf down through the center of the two. You basically have nine holes out and nine holes back, all bordered by giant dunes.”

The properties in which Keiser is involved – stretching from Bandon Dunes on the Pacific Coast to Cabot Cape Breton and it’s two courses in Nova Scotia – tend to feature layouts from a tight roster of highly acclaimed architects such as Doak and the team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw.

The Scottish Kidd was the designer of Keiser’s first 18-hole layout at Bandon Dunes, which opened in 1999. But he started building tougher courses that weren’t as much fun in the pursuit of “championship layouts” before experiencing what he has described as a come-to-Jesus moment several years ago. He has since put his focus on designing fun, amateur-friendly layouts. His projects at Gamble Sands in Washington and later the Keiser family’s Mammoth Dunes at Sand Valley in Wisconsin proved to Mike Keiser that Kidd was the right man to tackle the sandy hills at New River Dunes.

Bandon Dunes Bandon Dunes course
The first course ever designed by David McLay Kidd was Bandon Dunes (pictured) in Oregon, and he has plans for a new 18 south of the resort and on the other side of the town of Bandon. (Courtesy of Evan Schiller)

“The new David Kidd is really good,” Keiser said. “He wants his courses to be fun, and that’s what he’s delivering.”

The project was frequently called the Bandon Muni in its previous form, because Keiser planned to offer local players deeply discounted green fees of less than $50. The name has changed to New River Dunes, but plans to offer cheaper rates to locals remain, Keiser said. The locals’ rates likely will work in conjunction with those available at Bandon Crossings, a daily-fee course in town owned by Rex Smith, who Keiser described as a great supporter of previous plans for Bandon Muni.

Tourist golfers will, of course, pay more. Green fees at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort top out at $345 in summer for daily guests, but it’s not clear yet what the peak rate might be at New River Dunes.

Keiser also plans to institute a youth caddie program at New River Dunes. The caddies are a great part of the main resort, but Keiser said those caddies are adults, many of them accomplished players. At New River Dunes, Keiser wants to employ teen-agers who will become eligible for college scholarships through the course’s program.

David McLay Kidd designed Mammoth Dunes at Sand Valley in Wisconsin, another resort owned by the Keiser family. (Courtesy of Sand Valley/Evan Schiller)

Keiser and his family aren’t stopping in Oregon, either. Sons Michael and Chris operate Sand Valley, which has two of the best courses in Wisconsin, the eponymous Sand Valley layout and Mammoth Dunes. The Lido, a new course at Sand Valley that replicates in painstaking detail by Doak a famed course of the same name in New Jersey that was paved over during World War II, is scheduled to open in 2023.

Michael and Chris Keiser also are working to restore Glenway Golf Club in Madison, Wisconsin, and there are initial plans to build more courses, possibly even in the Florida Panhandle at an undisclosed site not far from Destin.

And Keiser, who previously predicted that Sheep Ranch would be the last course to open at Bandon Dunes, said there are plenty of great sites for golf along the Oregon coast, several of them even better than Bandon Dunes. While flying low over the countryside in a propeller plane, he has seen stretches of open land that make him dream of more golf holes.

“I’ve got the bug,” he said. “There is more land, although there is no more land that I own. You never know.”

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