Register now for 2026 tee time lottery at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort.
Dreaming of a first trip to Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in coastal Oregon to see what all the fuss is about? Already been, and itching to return? You better plan early – very early.
The incredibly popular resort, which features five 18-hole courses ranked highly among the best modern courses and resort layouts in the U.S., has announced a new pre-reservation methodology for scoring a tee time. Registration already is open for 2026. Yes, 2026.
Bandon Dunes Golf Resort has opened three registration windows for 2026 tee times, based on time of year in which a golfer hopes to obtain a tee time. The windows are:
Registration window closes Dec. 24: This first window is for tee times in January through April 2026.
Registration window closes Jan. 19, 2025: This second window is for tee times in May through September 2026.
Registration window closes April 20, 2025: This third window is for tee times in October through December 2026.
Within a couple weeks of the close of each window, there will be a random drawing to determine the order for reservation requests. Potential guests who are chosen in the random drawing will then be assigned a number that indicates their place in line, and Bandon Dunes Golf Resort’s booking team will call players when it’s their turn to select dates and courses.
All this is necessary because the resort has dealt with such a high call volume when previous booking windows have opened in recent years.
‘What happens to the ball when it lands is kind of a key part of design.’
What is minimalism in golf course architecture, anyway?
Several modern designers are frequently lumped into the same category of design under that stylistic banner, despite their sometimes wildly different products. Minimalism has become almost a catch-all for courses built by the likes of popular designers such as Tom Doak, David McLay Kidd, Gil Hanse, the team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, and several others.
The term is meant to contrast with the golf architects who came directly before them, designers who relied on heavy equipment and millions of cubic yards of earth moving to create new layouts. Greens would be pushed high above surrounding grade, hazards predominated and fairways would be sculpted by man. Think mounds – sometimes lots of mounds. Many of the courses built since the 1960s tried to create something out of nothing, or to greatly enhance what already lay waiting on the ground.
Minimalists, to the contrary, look for natural landforms to accent their designs, allowing and usually encouraging the ground to influence the path of the ball after it lands. Golf balls are round, after all, and they’ll roll if the architects and course conditions allow.
But is it fair to lump all of a designer’s work into one such category? Any of the top architects have laid down many courses that exude their own character. It’s not a copy-and-paste procedure. Is it appropriate to use the same term – minimalism – to describe courses of wildly differing routings and tone in various regions of the globe?
Doak, for one, is fine with it.
Check out our recent rater’s notebooks for several Tom Doak-designed courses and a restoration:
Tom Doak at Cabot Highlands, formerly known as Castle Stuart, in Scotland (Jason Lusk/Golfweek)
“The minimalist thing, I didn’t come up with that term originally, but I sort of like it from the standpoint of trying to use what we are given to work with as much as possible and kind of minimize the amount of artificial stuff that we have to do,” said the man behind top designs such as Pacific Dunes at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon, Ballyneal in Colorado and Barnbougle Dunes in Tasmania, among dozens of others. His recent work includes the new Pinehurst No. 10 in North Carolina plus the short and fascinating Sedge Valley at Sand Valley in Wisconsin.
For Doak, it’s all about a philosophy. He lets the ground dictate how the game will be played on any given site instead of trying to force his will upon the ground by lifting and shoving. It’s especially true on rolling, firm and sandy terrain.
“When you’re building a new golf course, you’re pretty much always going have to build greens and green complexes,” he said. “But on a good site that has movement and drains itself, you really shouldn’t have to be doing a lot of other stuff. You shouldn’t have to be tearing things up and moving a lot of dirt in fairways. A good routing should solve most of that.”
Nos. 10 and 11, which are back-to-back par 3s, helped put Pacific Dunes and Tom Doak on the map after the highly-ranked layout opened at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon in 2001. (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort)
It was a somewhat radical concept, somehow, when Doak left an associate’s job working for Pete Dye and hung his own shingle. His first solo design was High Pointe Golf Club in Michigan in 1989, and it almost was as if he had to defend his close-to-the-ground approach at the time.
This despite the fact that minimalism was nothing new. It was just largely forgotten in the United States. The old links courses in Scotland, Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom were, in all respects, minimalist courses. They had to be, as their designers didn’t have heavy machinery with which to work in the late 19th century – can you picture Old Tom Morris on a bulldozer? Instead, they walked the ground and found the best golf holes, making tweaks where necessary while greatly limited by their reliance on teams of horses or men with shovels to move ground. A classic architect’s obstacles to construction were gifts that keep on giving to fans of true links golf.
Tom Doak’s philosophy
CommonGround in Aurora, Colo., near Denver was designed by Tom Doak and opened in 2009. The course was developed by the Colorado State Golf Association. (Jason Lusk/Golfweek)
Doak has come full circle, having just completed a renovation of High Pointe before its recent reopening after years of abandonment. What has he learned over the years, and how has his style evolved?
“I think my philosophy hasn’t changed very much over the 35 years since I built High Pointe,” Doak said. “My execution is a lot better, and I’m probably more flexible, more interested in hearing what the client says in the beginning. I try to use that to make the next project a little bit different than the last project instead of just saying, ‘This is my thing, I’m going to do this everywhere.’ I don’t really want to do that. …
“You know, I still have the belief that you can’t punish the average golfer too much between the tee and the green because it’ll just be too hard for them. So the place where you make the golf course more challenging, because people have a chance to deal with it physically, is around the greens.”
It is there, on and around the putting surfaces, that a course is best defined. The closer a player gets to the flag, the more a great architect’s influence is felt. When applying a minimalist approach without much earth moving, it’s on the greens and along the ground approaching them that an architect’s creativity is best revealed.
“Somewhere between 50 and 80 percent of golfers play a fair amount of their golf along the ground,” Doak said. “They can hit it in the air for a while, but they can’t make it stop like a really good player. So what happens to the ball when it lands is kind of a key part of design. That’s the thing we have to make things interesting. We’re trying to allow the people that have to play golf along the ground to still have a chance to get the ball close to the hole.”
When the landscape is a links course, the mysteries are many, and the bounces good and bad, but rarely anything in between.
TROON, Scotland – Count PGA Championship winner Xander Schauffele among the American golfers who love crossing the pond to play some authentic links golf, that band of earth where land and sea come together, in the summertime.
Schauffele, 30, is set to make his seventh appearance at the British Open this week here at Royal Troon. His best result is T-2 at the 2018 Open at Carnoustie. When the landscape is a links course, the mysteries are many, and the bounces good and bad, but rarely anything in between.
“I think links golf, there’s a certain attitude that you need to have to play at a high level. That comes with playing links golf. That’s sort of the first thing I learned when I was here,” Schauffele said on Tuesday during the pre-championship interview. “When you play parkland golf a lot, you feel like you need to be perfect and on. Not that you need to be perfect or on, but on a typical links golf course, there’s always several ways to play a hole. If the weather gets really bad, you just have to, as always, take the bunkers out of play and really try and plot your way around the property. It doesn’t have to be super pretty. You don’t have to hit the center of the face all the time. When it’s 50 degrees and raining, center contact doesn’t even feel like it anyways.”
Schauffele was asked to describe his first experience playing links golf and recalled a visit he made to Bandon Dunes in Oregon, which is home to five of the top 25 modern designs on Golfweek’s Best Modern list.
“That’s probably the closest thing to links that I’ve ever played. Maybe it’s a little bit better now since it’s a lot older. I played it – shoot, I’m old now – probably 15 years ago. Makes me feel really old saying that,” he said. “Bandon Dunes was rather new when I went. You played the ball down, and the ball was running and Pacific Dunes and Bandon Dunes were the two courses built. Now there’s 10.
Bandon Dunes, the original and eponymous course at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort)
“It was cold and rainy, and I remember playing every hole in the wind and rain. My rain gear was completely irrelevant at some point, and I just kept going. I was 13 or 14 or 15 years old-ish and had the time of my life. It was something that I’d never experienced. I just expect it when I go to play links golf. I expect bad weather for it to play tough and for people to complain and whine. If you have a good attitude, you get that edge.”
Indeed, Bandon is about as good as it gets on this side of the pond.
Schauffele, the world No. 3, is one of two players along with Bryson DeChambeau to finish inside the top 10 in the first three majors this season – he also finished T-8 at the Masters and T-7 at the U.S. Open to go along with his victory at the PGA at Valhalla. Schauffele’s fondness for links golf makes him an ideal candidate to share the sentiments of five-time British Open winner Tom Watson.
“I’ve always hoped,” Watson once said, “that the last day of golf I play before I die will be 36 holes on the links of Scotland.”
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.
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.
Thanks to a winter storm that’s impacted a large swath of the nation, Bandon Dunes was closed for a second straight day on Friday.
In nearly two decades at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort, Scott Millhouser remembers only one other time like the one he suffered through this week as snow and freezing temperatures closed the Oregon golf mecca for more multiple afternoons.
“This is a once-in-a-decade kind of storm,” said Millhouser, who is the co-director of golf at the resort with Nick Bonander. “In my 18 years here I only remember one other time when we were closed like this for more than one day.”
What a rare sight! Bandon under a blanket of snow. Unfortunately, the courses were closed today but we're hopeful a sunny day tomorrow will lead to birds chirping for our golfers again. For everyone getting snow throughout the country, stay safe and warm! pic.twitter.com/p0rqjNlOTw
There are numerous slowdowns and icy roads, along with multiple closures on the coast on and near U.S. Highway 101. The Portland metro area has been in bad shape with multiple roads and highways iced over and jammed with cars, making it not an ideal place to travel.
downside of a rare weather event to hit the southern coast of Oregon is that we didn’t get to golf today.
the upside is we got a very rare look at a snow-covered yet sunny Bandon Dunes. quite surreal. pic.twitter.com/KtttWVluNM
And the chilly conditions are pushing down into unprecedented areas, like Southern California. Lows temperatures were set to reach 40 degrees over the weekend in the area. Three million Californians awoke Friday morning to a winter storm warning stemming from the storm that first rolled into the Golden State the day before, leaving more than 150,000 customers without electricity.
As much as 5 feet of snow may fall in some mountains near Los Angeles, creating whiteout conditions as winds gust to 75 mph. The conditions raise the risk of avalanches, according to forecasters.
The weather service in San Diego issued its first-ever blizzard warning for mountain areas including Big Bear, Lake Arrowhead and Wrightwood through Saturday. The weather service in Los Angeles issued its own blizzard warning for the mountains of Los Angeles and Ventura counties.
There is good news, however, as the cold snap shouldn’t last too long.
In fact, Millhouser said snow was starting to thaw at Bandon Dunes late Friday, and golfers were using the range to prepare for the weekend.
“The practice facility never closed,” Millhouser said. “And we should be playing golf tomorrow.”
Our travel writer has played 79 golf courses so far in 2022. Here’s what stood out.
I have one of the best jobs in the world, but don’t tell my boss that I acknowledged such. Truth is, plenty of people would line up to do this travel job for free. Play golf around the world and write about it – just about a perfect gig.
There are some downsides. The 3 a.m. wakeup calls, the flight delays, the time away from family, the late nights staring at the keyboard, not to mention all the bogeys. But these are niggles, easily dismissed.
I played 79 golf courses so far in 2022, and I am likely to add at least one or two more before the calendar flips. There were affordable munis, high-end private clubs and plenty of top-dollar resorts. I see the full spectrum of golf in my travels, from dirt fairways to perfect putting surfaces. They all were among the 250-plus stories I filed in 2022, and I remember just about every shot from each round – my wife calls this ability to recall and fret about shots I struck months ago a major character flaw.
With the year wrapping up soon, it’s time to take a look back at several of my favorite experiences of 2022. I played from California to Scotland, and some days, courses and golf holes just stood out.
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.
(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.
Sheep Ranch opens at Bandon Dunes with clever routing, extreme contours and nine greens perched on cliffs above the Pacific Ocean
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BANDON, Ore. – We could see forever on the downhill stroll to the first green at the new Sheep Ranch at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort. The view from that northernmost point of the resort was all Pacific Ocean to the west, while the panorama to the south appeared as exposed land that somehow has taken on the shape of ocean waves, rising and falling at the whims of the wind. Flagsticks dotted the exuberant landscape, dancing in the seaside breezes.
Built upon a mile of jagged coastline, the tract initially looks huge. The ninth green sits at the far southern end, nearly reaching the bluffs at Old Macdonald and the rest of the famed golf resort. On an early preview round before the course’s official June 1 opening, it was a thrill to know we would play from here to there, then back again – we could see almost all the challenges waiting ahead. With few trees to block the sightlines, it looks like one giant playground.
But looks certainly can be deceiving.
The design team led by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw had to dig deep into its bag of tricks to make this highly anticipated course work on a deceptively small piece of land that is roughly 600 yards across at its widest. With only about 140 acres for the course before the land climbs into trees to the east, Coore and Crenshaw fashioned a genius routing that plays as wide open as the views.
The grand opening of the Sheep Ranch will reveal several differences to the resort’s other courses – all of which rank highly in the Golfweek’s Best ratings of greatest modern golf courses in the United States. Pacific Dunes is ranked No. 2, Old Macdonald is No. 5, Bandon Dunes is No. 8 and Bandon Trails is No. 14.
Greens stretch along the cliffs at the Sheep Ranch at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort (David Davis/Statesman Journal)
The most immediately noticed difference is that the Sheep Ranch’s cliffs are not as linear, with promontories jutting 100 feet above the beach that afforded somewhat surreal opportunities to build several greens and tees almost entirely surrounded by open sky. And second is the ground itself, with little natural foliage to hide the sweeping internal contours.
“For the most part we did what we always try to do,” Coore said. “If you find a site that has a lot of inherent qualities, natural qualities for golf, you just let that guide the process. Certainly at the Sheep Ranch, the site was inherently different than any of the courses there. It definitely had different contours than most of the other courses. It wasn’t sand, wasn’t dunes. It just had such interesting natural contours for golf, amazingly interesting contours. We tried to let those contours and the coastline dictate the type of course.”
A few things to know going in: The Sheep Ranch is a compact course that is much more exposed to sometimes extreme wind than the other tracks at Bandon Dunes. The views are ridiculous. It has nine greens on those incredible, 100-foot Pacific cliffs. The fairways are wide, but that fact alone doesn’t necessarily make it easy to hit them when the wind is howling. For the first time at the resort, players can intentionally hit balls over the cliffs to targets perched on those dramatic promontories instead of just alongside the cliffs.
And there are no traditional sand bunkers. Not one. More on that later.
There are nine greens on the coast at the Sheep Ranch at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort. (Gabe Gudgel/Golfweek)
As for the question I get most after my preview round: No, I won’t call it my favorite of the now five 18-hole courses at the resort, simply because it’s impossible for me to choose. Golfers will gather in McKee’s Pub and around the fire pit to figure out that argument, and they’re all right no matter which course they choose. My favorite at Bandon is always the next one on my schedule.
“I think it was Willie Nelson who said, you just do the best you can – in his case music – and then you throw it out there for everyone to judge,” Coore said. “Somebody will tell you if it’s any good or not. The Sheep Ranch is a little like that in the sense it’s quite different than the other courses at Bandon. We think it’s good, and we’re very pleased with what happened there. How it will be perceived is up to others to determine.”
The fact that the Sheep Ranch is even part of the discussion as the best course at Bandon Dunes involves some sleight of hand that has holes zigging and zagging across the landscape with so many greens perched above the ocean. It’s that intimacy with the cliffs that turn this course into one continuous photo op. That was the goal from the outset for Sheep Ranch co-owners Mike Keiser and Phil Friedmann.
“Mike and Phil are very good natured, but they had a very pointed directive: Try to use every single foot of that coastline. Every foot. And I can’t say it enough, I mean every foot,” Coore said with a laugh. “We all like to have fun with that kind of stuff in conversations, but it’s hard to do. We could have said we’re just going to run some holes along the ocean and along the cliffs, but if you do that, you get very few holes on the ocean.”
The highlight of the cliffside holes – and the focal point for the entire course – is the giant double green for Nos. 3 and 16. Jutting into the ocean atop Fivemile Point, suspended above dark rocks that rise from the water, it was obvious from the outset that this spot was special. It surely will take its place among the best spots for a golf selfie on the planet – the caddies will be busy here, handing off putters in exchange for smartphones for the obligatory shot.
No. 16 green at the Sheep Ranch at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort (Gabe Gudgel/Golfweek)
But much of what makes the Sheep Ranch work was not so obvious. Routing is a common term in golf, frequently used to casually describe a course as a whole. But to a course designer, it’s the nuanced art of fashioning 18 holes into a cohesive experience. And at the Sheep Ranch, the routing is everything.
The new course replaces a 13-hole track on the site that was built by Tom Doak and Jim Urbina and which also was named Sheep Ranch. It was owned independently by Friedmann, who along with Keiser was a co-founder of Recycled Paper Greetings, Inc., in 1971. That version of the Sheep Ranch wasn’t open to standard resort play and didn’t always follow a traditional routing, as the handful of players who experienced it could choose their tees and greens in a golf version of the basketball game Horse.
So how did Coore and Crenshaw approach the task of making 18 holes fit onto the piece of land that previously held just 13?
“The big thing, because of the small size of the property and the effects of the wind out there, we did have some concerns that if we built a bunch of holes that paralleled each other, balls could go anywhere,” Coore said. “Once balls get airborne on that kind of wind, they could go laterally a long way – they can go anywhere. We tried to figure out, the most interesting ground is here along the cliffs and, say, 400 yards inland – how do we best utilize that? But we can’t just line the holes up in a paralleling fashion because we were worried about where some of these tee shots would go on that wind.”
Turns out, the secret is in the clever and shared arrangement of the tee boxes.
No. 7 at the Sheep Ranch at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes)
If a course is built with parallel holes, each tee box consumes a sizeable chunk of land. Then there is all that ground stretching from tee to fairway. Factor in the space to keep the holes far enough apart so that each has its own identity – and so that players are less likely to send tee shots screaming on a crazy wind into other groups – and a designer will have used a lot of land that isn’t even really in play.
Instead, Coore and Crenshaw created several tee boxes that serve as hubs from which multiple fairways radiate outward and away from each other. Consider the spokes on a bicycle wheel: The spokes grow farther apart as they stretch outward from the hub.
Same thing with several of the Sheep Ranch tee boxes and fairways, with key examples being Nos. 2 and 18, Nos. 5 and 15 and Nos. 8 and 10. Placing the tees close together allows the fairways to extend farther apart while consuming less land.
(Routing graphic courtesy of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort; Map by Google Earth)
“Ben and I both agree, if we did anything that was maybe a bit unusual but was actually key to unlocking the routing there, it was combining those tee complexes,” Coore said. “By pulling tee complexes very close together where they almost become common teeing grounds for two different holes, it allowed us to really make it compact in the teeing areas. Then as the holes go away from the tees to the landing areas, they can get wider and wider. That was one of the absolute keys to the routing of the golf course.”
It also creates what can be a fun, communal vibe on the tee shots. Whereas most top courses revel in a sense of isolation, with one group rarely coming in contact with another, players will frequently come face-to-face with others at the Sheep Ranch.
“You’ll see a lot of other folks hitting golf shots, and they’ll be seeing you hitting golf shots too,” Coore said with a laugh. “If it were at a municipal golf course some place, it would be harder to pull this off because you would have to be so aware of which tees you are going to and which way you’re playing. It would be easy to get up there and play down the wrong hole. While we tried to delineate the lines of play very distinctly, it helps that Bandon Dunes has caddies and the vast majority of players choose to use them.”
One thing those caddies won’t need is a rake.
Instead of traditional sand traps, the Sheep Ranch features a wide range of shallow areas dug out like bunkers, but with variations of grass instead of sand. Some are partially mowed, while others have taller and wispier grass. Coore described them as looking like old, abandoned bunkers that have grown over with grass.
One of the main reasons for skipping the sand was the strong winds so prevalent at the Sheep Ranch. Wind over 30 mph – common at all the cliffside holes at the resort and even more so at the Sheep Ranch – can blow sand out of a bunker, making the traps a maintenance headache. And because the Sheep Ranch isn’t built on sandy terrain like the resort’s other courses, instead being laid out over what Coore called “red shot clay,” having sand blow out of the traps would leave hard-pan clay bottoms exposed.
No. 17 at the Sheep Ranch at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes)
For inspiration on how to handle that problem, Coore and Crenshaw looked to a classic golf architecture book, The Links by Robert Hunter that was first published in 1926.
“There’s an old black and white photograph of contours that are just so incredible, and there’s a caption that says one day there will be a site with contours so interesting for golf that bunkers will be unnecessary,” Coore said. “And we thought if we were ever going to build a golf course with no formal bunkers, this is probably the place. Given the weather conditions, given the soil type and given the amazing contours, this is the site. So that was the beginning of the idea.”
Coore said that Keiser, the original developer of Bandon Dunes who has built a network of top courses around North America, got on board quickly. Friedmann, however, needed a little convincing to leave out what is typically one of the most recognizable features of a great course.
“Phil, I guess, was a bit more hesitant, and for good reason,” Coore said. “His comment was that we could build some of the most spectacular bunkers on earth here, and he was absolutely right. We could, and I could see how there would be bunkers looking like waves crashing against green sites. But again, we get back to long-term maintenance, and did we want to do that? Or do we want to try something a bit different?”
Coore expects that the lack of sand bunkers will make the course play easier for mid- and higher-handicapped players.
“But for the best players who can spin a bunker shot and control those shots consistently, I have an idea they will find those grassy bunker-type areas to be more unpredictable and more difficult,” he said. “All those things have been involved in the thought process collectively.”
No. 9 green at the Sheep Ranch, backed by a gorse-covered gorge and hillside (Gabe Gudgel/Golfweek)
The lack of bunkers is just one more example of different being interesting. Coore and Crenshaw didn’t set out to copy Pacific Dunes or Old Macdonald. With the eyes of the golf world on the much-heralded site, they understood that they needed to embrace the differences.
“We knew the expectations would be extreme because of the spectacular nature of the site and the coastline being so different, exposing it differently and play-wise to the ocean than the other courses,” Coore said. “And we knew people would focus on the spectacular potential and not so much on the restrictions of the site. That can be daunting, because people will think that if you can’t build the best course at Bandon on that site, you’ve done something wrong.
“The potential is extreme, but the restrictive nature of it is extreme as well. How do we work these things together? We knew the expectations would be very high, but the downside could be very high too. It’s a site where you can succeed spectacularly, or you can fail miserably. … I will say, we’re thrilled with how it turned out.”
Everything you need to know for the 2020 Bandon Dunes Championship.
A pair of top-25 teams highlight the field bound for Oregon this week to tee it up at one of the most-popular destination golf resorts in the country.
The University of Idaho and Tom Doak’s Pacific Dunes course play host this week for the 2020 Bandon Dunes Championship, March 8-10. Defending champion Utah, No. 14 Washington, No. 23 UCLA and three more members of the Pac-12 lead the 14-team field.
March 8-10. 54-hole tournament, 18 holes each day.
Field
Idaho, Oregon, Oregon State, Denver, Cal Baptist, Washington, Washington State, Seattle, San Jose State, Fresno State, Seton Hall, Northern Colorado, UCLA, Kansas, Boise State and Utah
Players to watch
Devon Bling, junior, UCLA
Loves the big moments at the best courses. Coming off a strong showing at the loaded Southern Highlands Collegiate where he shot 4-under 68 during the final round to finish third.
Noah Woolsey, junior, Washington
No. 14 Washington’s best player. Woolsey has four top-five finishes this season, including three individual wins.
Blake Tomlinson, junior, Utah
It’s a different course from last year, but the event’s defending individual champion returns with fond memories of his win in 2019.
