Check out the photos of a new reversible nine-hole course by the team behind Landmand and Sweetens Cove.
One of the more interesting golf course openings of 2024 has been Crossroads at the private Palmetto Bluff in Bluffton, South Carolina. It’s fitting that it was designed by one of golf’s more interesting firms, King-Collins Golf Course Design.
Tad King and Rob Collins are the architects – and now co-owners – of the nine-hole Sweetens Cove, which for the better part of a decade has been the No. 1 ranked public-access layout in Tennessee. They also designed Landmand, which in two years has shot up to become the No. 1 public-access course in Nebraska. Their resume of courses continues to grow, including the new Red Feather in Texas.
At Crossroads, they went back to their nine-hole roots. Situated on 54 acres of rolling dunes alongside an extensive inland waterway, the layout features a mix of par 3s, 4s and 5s integrated into a reversible layout. Playing it in one direction sports the name The Hammer, and the other direction is called The Press as the course crisscrosses itself. Like Sweetens Cove, the layout was built with match play in mind and is a great venue for cross-country golf in which players pick their own holes, should they choose.
Crossroads opened in January of 2024, the second course at Palmetto Bluff following the Jack Nicklaus-designed May River course that opened in 2005. In keeping with a low-key vibe, Crossroads features a pro shop in an Airstream trailer and a food truck on site, plus a 34,000-square-foot Himalayas-style putting green near the first tee. The course is accessible by electric boat or kayak. The course plays anywhere from 1,000 yards to 3,100.
The Crossroads is mostly private, but there are a limited number of tee times available to guests of the onsite and upscale hotel at Montage Palmetto Bluff.
Check out a selection of the latest photos of Crossroads below.
Trev Dormer plans to do some “different, quirky things” in his renovation of a Nebraska nine-holer.
Canadian golf architect Trev Dormer, perhaps best known in the industry for his work as an associate for the team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, has signed on for his first solo project.
Working with the farming family behind the development of the popular new Landmand Golf Club in eastern Nebraska, Dormer will completely renovate the family’s nearby nine-hole course at Old Dane Golf Club in Dakota City, Nebraska.
The Andersen family bought an 18-hole course in 2007 and converted it to nine holes, the current Old Dane. Dormer’s plan is to tear out the entire course and introduce a 12-hole routing that can be played as loops of six, nine or 12 holes across 93 acres of what is currently flat ground. Dormer’s team will build a lake that will provide fill to introduce elevation changes.
“There will be different ways to play the course – I just wanted to get as much golf on the property as I could,” Dormer, who recently completed his work at the new Point Hardy Golf Club at Cabot Saint Lucia in the Caribbean, said in a media release announcing the renovation of Old Dane. “It’s a dead flat site, so I’m trying to do some different, quirky things – a tee shot over the previous green for example. I think it will be significantly more fun and more interesting, and I hope it raises some questions among those who play it.”
Trev Dormer’s routing plans for the soon-to-be-remodeled Old Dane Golf Club in Dakota City, Nebraska (Courtesy of Old Dane Golf Club/Trev Dormer)
The current version of Old Dane will shut down in October, with Dormer and his crew immediately beginning the renovation, which will include the removal of the current driving range. Dormer expects the new, walking-only version of Old Dane to open in 2026.
The operators expect the green fees to remain substantially near the current $15 for nine holes and $25 for a double-loop of 18 holes. Dormer said he hopes to attract new players, especially children and families, to what will be an entirely new course.
“There will not be a single square yard of ground on the property that is untouched by the plow,” Dormer said.
The Andersen family has been in the golf news in recent years after employing King-Collins Golf Course Design to build the large-scale Landmand, which opened in 2022 to become the Golfweek’s Best No. 1 public-access layout in Nebraska and tie for No. 26 among all modern courses in the U.S.
Old Dane sits even closer to the Iowa border, about an 8-mile drive to the northeast of Landmand. Old Dane is about a 15-minute drive from Sioux City, Iowa, and is close to Sioux Gateway Airport.
“This project is about finishing what we didn’t completely do when we built the course originally,” owner Will Andersen said in the media release. “We bought the course because my dad wanted a place to go and hang out with his friends, and we achieved that, but we didn’t do that much with the golf course. The irrigation system is 23 years old, and it’s falling apart.”
Trev Dormer, right, speaks with Bill Coore, center, and Ben Crenshaw during construction of the recently completed Point Hardy Golf Club at Cabot Saint Lucia. (Jason Lusk/Golfweek)
Dormer worked briefly with King-Collins on Landmand, and Andersen was impressed with Dormer’s efforts. Dormer started his career in the early 2000s and has worked with several top architects including Ron Prichard, Rod Whitman, Nicklaus Design and Gil Hanse.
“When I thought about rebuilding Old Dane, I had a chat with Rob Collins (of King-Collins), and he confirmed my thought that Trevor would be the right candidate to do the job,” Andersen said.
This eastern Nebraska track was the first original 18-hole layout by King-Collins Golf Course Design.
The public-access Landmand Golf Club in Homer, Nebraska, the first original 18-hole layout by King-Collins Golf Course Design, opened for regular play Sept. 3, 2022, to a rousing reception and word is spreading fast.
“For 2023, our first full season, we sold out in approximately two and a half months,” general manager Adam Fletcher told Golf Business News.
But that was just a warm-up.
“This year it was more like two and a half hours,” he said.
Built atop and around bluffs and dunes in the Loess Hills – geologic terrain left in the wake of retreating glaciers during the last Ice Age – Landmand presented unique challenges and opportunities in a wide-open and extreme landscape with views for miles. Collins said he and King went all-out in trying to take advantage of everything the site, including its 150 feet of elevation changes, offered.
“The first time you see it, the scale is just going to blow your mind. Every time I go out there, I laugh about it. Things that are gigantic in reality just shrink in this landscape,” Collins said.
No. 8 at Landmand Golf Club in Homer, Nebraska (Courtesy of Landmand Golf Club)Landmand Golf Club in Nebraska (Courtesy of Landmand/Vaughn Halyard)Landmand Golf Club in Nebraska (Courtesy of Landmand Golf Club)
Check out Golfweek’s top 100 U.S. public-access golf courses in 2023.
Welcome to the Golfweek’s Best 2023 list of the Top 100 Best Courses You Can Play in the U.S. Each year, we publish many lists, with this selection of public-access layouts among the premium offerings.
The hundreds of members of our course-ratings panel continually evaluate courses and rate them based on 10 criteria on a points basis of 1 through 10. They also file a single, overall rating on each course. Those overall ratings are averaged to produce these rankings. The top handful of courses in the world have an average rating of above 9, while many excellent layouts fall into the high-6 to 8 range.
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.
Each course is listed with its 2022 ranking in parenthesis in the title line, its average rating next to the name, the location, the year it opened and the designers.
KEY: (m) modern, built in 1960 or after; (c) classic, built before 1960. For courses with a number preceding the (m) or (c), that is where the course ranks on Golfweek’s Best lists for top 200 modern or classic courses in the U.S.
Golfweek’s experts have ranked the Top 200 courses built since 1960, such as Bandon Dunes, Whistling Straits and more.
Want to play the great modern golf courses in the U.S.? From Hawaii to Boston, we have you covered. So welcome to the Golfweek’s Best 2023 list of the Top 200 Modern Courses built in or after 1960 in the United States.
The hundreds of members of our course-ratings panel continually evaluate courses and rate them based on 10 criteria on a points basis of 1 through 10. They also file a single, overall rating on each course. Those overall ratings are averaged to produce these rankings. The top handful of courses in the world have an average rating of above 9, while many excellent layouts fall into the high-6 to the 8 range.
To ensure these lists are up-to-date, Golfweek’s Best in recent years has altered how the individual ratings are compiled into the rankings. Only ratings from rounds played in the past 10 years are included in the compilations. This helps ensure that any course in the rankings still measures up.
Courses also must have a minimum of 25 votes to qualify for the Top 200 Modern or the Top 200 Classic. Other Golfweek’s Best lists, such as Best Courses You Can Play or Best Private, do not require as many votes. This makes it possible that a course can show up on other lists but not on the premium Top 200 lists.
There’s one course of particular note this year. Landmand Golf Club in Homer, Nebraska, debuts the highest of the courses new to this list, climbing into a tie for 26th. Designed by Tad King and Rob Collins, Landmand opened in 2022. It and the Sheep Ranch at Bandon Dunes are the only courses to have opened since 2020 to rank among the top 200.
Each course is listed with its average rating next to the name, then the location, the year it opened and the designers. The list notes in parenthesis next to the name of each course where that course ranked in 2022.
After the designers are several designations that note what type of facility it is:
Want to play the best public-access golf courses in each state? Keep reading.
Fresh for 2023, we present the Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play list for the top public-access layouts in each state, as judged by our nationwide network of raters.
The hundreds of members of our course-ratings panel continually evaluate courses and rate them on 10 criteria on a points basis of 1 through 10. They also file a single, overall rating on each course. Those overall ratings are averaged to produce all our Golfweek’s Best course rankings.
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 – no membership required. (There are a handful of courses on this list that some players might consider to be private, but they do allow non-hosted, non-member guest play in some limited form, normally through a local hotel or similar arrangement.)
There’s one course of particular note this year. Of the dozens of courses new to this list, only Landmand Golf Club in Homer, Nebraska, debuts in the No. 1 spot in its state. Designed by Tad King and Rob Collins, Landmand opened in 2022.
KEY: (m) modern, built in 1960 or after; (c) classic, built before 1960. For courses with a number preceding the (m) or (c), that is where the course ranks on Golfweek’s Best lists for top 200 modern and classic courses in the U.S.
* indicates new or returning to the rankings
Editor’s note: The Golfweek’s Best 2023 rankings of top private courses in each state will be published Monday, June 12. More lists, such as the top 200 Modern and top 200 Classic Courses lists for 2023, will be published in the following weeks.
Rob Collins and design partner Tad King break the glass ceiling with Landmand Golf Club in Nebraska.
Big and bold – good words to live by. Interesting, different, unlikely. All attributes ascribed to artists, authors, chefs, actors … really anyone who can grab attention and hold it.
Even golf course architects.
Rob Collins initially grabbed attention for his big and bold design at Sweetens Cove Golf Club which opened in 2015 in remote Tennessee. A nine-holer built on a flat floodplain amidst the Appalachian Mountains, Sweetens Cove had to grab attention and hold it – a run-of-the-mill design atop the previous course named Sequatchie Valley on the same damp site might have drawn flies, but not many golfers.
Instead, Collins and his design partner, Tad King, moved some 300,000 cubic yards of dirt to erect what has become Tennessee’s No. 1-ranked public-access course in Golfweek’s Best ratings. Big greens, bold slopes – there are those words again, and at Sweetens Cove, those concepts have drawn a loyal following of golfers who will drive to the middle of nowhere to experience something different and entirely interesting.
“I always did believe there was some form of greatness to be achieved out there, and that it could be very popular,” Collins said of Sweetens Cove, the first course built by his and King’s then-new golf architecture firm, King-Collins. “It was so different and so unique and so much fun, the early adopters of the place gave us so much enthusiasm and belief in what we had done. It was like a religious experience for a lot of people.”
Now comes the next step in big and bold for King-Collins, on a completely different landscape and scale – and after waiting longer than either could have imagined after Sweetens Cove’s ascent into the top 100 modern golf courses in the U.S.
The public-access Landmand Golf Club in eastern Nebraska, King-Collins’ first original 18-hole layout, opens for regular play September 3 on what Collins describes as simply crazy terrain for golf. Built atop and around bluffs and dunes near the village of Homer in the Loess Hills – geologic terrain left in the wake of retreating glaciers during the last Ice Age – Landmand presented unique challenges and opportunities in a wide-open and extreme landscape with views for miles. Collins said he and King went all-out in trying to take advantage of everything the site, including its 150 feet of elevation changes, offered.
An all-timer today @LandmandG – it’s impossible to express the amount of gratitude that Tad & I feel toward @wanders1140 & his great family for giving us this opportunity. It was a thrill from start to finish playing shots into features that so many labored over. pic.twitter.com/cujUBk2pQk
“You had to just put the pedal down and go for it,” Collins said of his approach to Landmand. “The first time you see it, the scale is just going to blow your mind. Every time I go out there, I laugh about it. Things that are gigantic in reality just shrink in this landscape.”
On such a vast playing field – and because of the region’s frequent gusty winds – Collins said his team was inspired to install massive fairways, sometimes with one fairway corridor serving two holes. None of the fairways are less than 80 yards wide, several single fairways top out at more than 100 yards wide and the connecting fairways are stretched beyond 150 yards.
“A 60- or 70-yard-wide fairway just doesn’t cut it out there because it shrinks visually in the scale of that landscape,” Collins said. “And so, a 60-yard fairway would look 30 yards wide. You hit a ball out there and walk down into the fairway, you’re like, ‘My God, it’s gigantic, there’s no way I could have missed this fairway.’ You need features that are just that big out there.”
The green for the short par-4 17th as the grass grows in at Landmand Golf Club in Homer, Nebraska (Courtesy of Landmand Golf Club)
The greens at Landmand are similarly huge. Average greens at most U.S. courses are between 5,000 and 7,000 square feet – purely for example, Augusta National Golf Club’s greens average just over 6,400 square feet, while those at Pebble Beach Golf Links are tiny at about 3,500 square feet. At Landmand, King-Collins constructed putting surfaces that frequently blow past 20,000 square feet.
As a comparison for King-Collins fans, Collins said he receives frequent comments on the size of the fourth green at Sweetens Cove, an Alps-inspired putting surface stretching some 80 yards front to back. At Landmand, the fourth green from Sweetens would be only the fifth-largest putting surface.
Collins cites the par-3 fifth at Landmand as a great example of a large green fitting a big landscape. The approach from the back tee is some 240 yards across a chasm to a putting surface of more than 25,000 square feet.
“You look at it, and yeah it seems big, but then you get on it and realize it’s huge,” Collins said. “It has to be to fit. Standing on the tee, even a 12,000-square-foot green on top of that ridge would look stupid. It would look like a pimple on the ass of an elephant. It would look like we shied away from the landscape. We had to build features that embraced that boldness.”
It’s all part of the width and size serving strategy. Players shouldn’t just whack away and expect an easy next shot from a wide, forgiving fairway, especially if the wind blows. There’s skill to discerning the best route to any hole, Collins said, and golfers better think before they swing.
“Every shot on every golf course we ever do, we want to have a meaning behind it,” he said. “We don’t want any hole to take a shot off. We always want the golfer engaged. That may mean hazard placement, or in a lot of cases at a place like Landmand, it’s a big contour. … Each hole at Landmand was built to ask varying versions of some type of questions, and a lot of that is through contour.”
The Scottish architect tackles the Sandhills, a geologic region blessed with great golf terrain.
David McLay Kidd made a name for himself by building a course in a far-flung outpost far from any major cities. His Bandon Dunes layout was the fuel that propelled the resort of the same name into the national spotlight a little more than 20 years ago, despite the effort required for golfers to reach the now-famous destination on the southern coast of Oregon.
Now Kidd is tackling a new project in a region known for out-of-the-way yet exceptional golf: The Nebraska Sandhills. But his new course might be a little easier to reach than most of the top destinations built in the Sandhills in recent decades.
Kidd and his crew have broken ground on the private GrayBull, a Dormie Network project just north of tiny Maxwell, Nebraska – less than a 30-minute drive from North Platte and its commercial airport. The site is in the southern reaches of the Sandhills, more than an hour south of several top courses such as Sand Hills Golf Club (Golfweek’s Best No. 1 Modern Course in the U.S.) or Prairie Club (with the Dunes, the No. 1 public-access layout in Nebraska).
Kidd just had to cross a river to find it.
A road stretches past GrayBull, a new Dormie Network golf course in Nebraska being built by David McLay Kidd. (Courtesy of the Dormie Network)
Dormie Network is a private course operator based in Lincoln, Nebraska. Currently available to its members are six courses spread about the central and eastern regions of the country: ArborLinks in Nebraska City, Nebraska; Ballyhack in Roanoke, Virginia; Briggs Ranch in San Antonio, Texas; Dormie Club in West End, North Carolina; Hidden Creek in Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey; and Victoria National in Newburgh, Indiana. Members of the network have access to each course – many of which rank highly among private clubs in their states – and its amenities, which include on-site cabins.
Dormie began considering the addition of a new facility near North Platte several years ago, starting the search south of the Platte River. Kidd was recruited to scout one proposed site, but he didn’t like what he saw that far south.
“The Sandhills of Nebraska, which are the famed area where Sand Hills (Golf Club) and Prairie Club and Dismal River and others are, are all north of the Platte River, not to the south,” said Kidd, who has built more than 20 courses around the world. “The first time I went there and we crossed the river headed south, I immediately thought, ooh, this is not the direction I want to be going in. I want to be going north, not south.”
To the south, Kidd said, he saw steep terrain with dense vegetation and heavy soils – “Not great golf terrain.” He and his group turned the car and headed north across the river into the Sandhills, starting a long search for a new site for what will become GrayBull.
The site of the new GrayBull in Nebraska in the southern reaches of the Sandhills
After months of seeing proposed sites that didn’t tick all the boxes – great golf terrain, sandy soil, unspoiled views – Kidd was pitched a parcel that was part of a ranch. He loved it from the moment the topo charts loaded on his computer, and the Dormie Network set about acquiring almost 2,000 acres from the rancher.
“I learned that bad ranch land turns out to be great golf land,” Kidd said with a laugh. “The ranchers on the Sandhills want relatively flat land because they want the cattle to just eat all the grass and not exercise, so they just keep putting on weight. We golfers don’t want the flat land. We want the rumply sand with ridges, hummocks, holes, bumps and all that going on. The cows would be climbing up and down hills all day, damn near getting exercise. That’s no use. Skinny cows are no good. …
“This site, it’s like the Goldilocks thing: not too flat, not too steep. It’s kind of in a bowl that looks inwards, and there are no bad views. It’s wide open, no big roads, no visual contamination – ticks all the boxes.”
The site for GrayBull, a new Dormie Network golf course being built by David McLay Kidd (Courtesy of the Dormie Network)
Kidd and his crew broke ground in June with an unspecified target opening in 2024. It will become Dormie Network’s seventh facility, and unlike many Sandhills courses, it will not require a long drive from the North Platte airport.
Kidd said the course will continue in his ethos of playability, a mantra he has preached since building a handful of courses more than a decade ago that were deemed too difficult for most players. His more recent efforts – particularly the public-access Gamble Sands in Washington and Mammoth Dunes at Sand Valley in Wisconsin – have been lauded for their fairway widths, creativity and playability. Kidd said GrayBull will retain those sensibilities, even if he does add a few more testing shots, especially around the greens.
A diagram for a proposed hole at GrayBull, a new Dormie Network golf course in Nebraska being built by David McLay Kidd (Courtesy of the Dormie Network)
“The landscape is so expansive, it’s hard to imagine building a 30-yard-wide fairway and it not looking ridiculous in the landscape,” the native Scot said. “For sure, the golf course is going to be brawny. I would want it to be forgiving for the average guy when they make mistakes, but I also think the Dormie Network is for golfers … who are probably a little more into it than the guy who makes that once-in-a-lifetime trip somewhere. I’d think these golfers are a little better players, so we’ll adjust accordingly but not by a whole lot. We still want it to be super fun, and we still want them to be able to screw up a little and still get back into the game to some extent.
“The site is extremely unique. It’s like nothing I have ever seen before. Because of that, the golf look, the golf feel, the golf design will be responding to the site. I don’t think anyone who plays Mammoth Dunes or Gamble Sands will show up and say this is an exact copy of those because the site is so different. But, will my ethos change massively? No. I will be staying in my lane, creating golf of that ilk – broad fairways with tight aggressive scoring lanes with wide areas to recover.”
David McLay Kidd (Golfweek files)
GrayBull likely will become a big part of the golf discussion of the Sandhills, a geologic region blessed with incredibly rolling and bouncy terrain that has exploded onto any well-versed traveling golfer’s radar since the opening of Sand Hills Golf Club in 1995. And GrayBull is not alone as a new development in the state, as architects Rob Collins and Tad King of Sweetens Cove fame plan to open the public-access Landmand Golf Club on the eastern side of the state, not in the Sandhills but also on dramatic land.
“(Bandon Dunes developer and owner) Mike Keiser proved that a good location for golf design was more important than a good location for demographics,” Kidd said when asked about building in far-flung locations instead of near larger cities. “The demographics were surmountable, but a poor golf site was not. You just can’t build a good golf course if the site doesn’t allow it. Doesn’t matter how much money you throw at it, chances are the golf course will almost always be inferior because you started with a poor site. …
“The Sandhills are incredible for golf, and this is by far the largest site I’ve ever been given for one 18-hole golf course. Everywhere you look there’s a golf hole.”
Landmand, Te Arai, among others have golf architecture fans champing at the bit for 2022 to arrive.
After a decade of course closings dominating the headlines starting with the economic downturn in 2008, architects have been busier moving earth over the past several years. Coast to coast as well as abroad, several top-tier layouts have come online from noted architects – think Tom Doak, Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner, Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, even Tiger Woods.
This new year promises more of the same, with the following five new courses being among those I can’t wait to see in 2022.
In keeping with recent development trends, these courses aren’t necessarily close to major population centers. Only one of them – the East Course at PGA Frisco – is near a big city, situated as it is on the northern outskirts of Dallas. The other four on this list? You’ll need planes, trains, automobiles or maybe a boat, and definitely a passport.
Doesn’t matter. Great golf is worth any travel. So in no particular order, here are five new courses I want to sink my nubby spikes into during 2022.
