bandon dunes, bandon, oregon, texas golf, texas golfer, golf travel

Golfers headed into the new season are full of new year’s resolutions. Practice more, play more, slice your tee shoots less, play by the rules, play with your family, get to a professional tournament.

Here a resolution, there a resolution, everywhere a resolution.

But for the true lover of the game, there’s one goal that should immediately jump to the top of the list for 2007.

Make the golf pilgrimage to Bandon Dunes, Oregon. Now. This year. As soon as possible.
For those who have heard about this links-style golfing marvel on the remote Southern Oregon Coast, it’s as good or even better than you’ve heard.

For those golfers who have never heard of Bandon Dunes (a surprisingly large number from personal experience), Bandon Dunes is as close to an authentic Scottish or Irish golf experience as you can have without leaving the US of A.

Hate the 8-hour transatlantic flights? Don’t have a passport? Worried about traveling overseas? Your golf trip compass should be pointed directly toward Brandon Dunes in 2007.

In fact, this 54-hole pure golf facility, with its latest 18-hole addition by Texas legend Ben Crenshaw, and a recently announced fourth course for 2010, has earned my personal designation as “BTPB.”

“BTPB?” “Better than Pebble Beach,” its more storied, expensive and famous West Coast golf resort neighbor.

What backs up that claim, which many once considered golf heresy is the pure nature of golf concentration and challenge here, a non-stop flight to Portland and regional jet connection or four hour drive south along the coast.

Looking for lavishly appointed rooms? None at Bandon Dunes.

Fully complimented spa? Nope.

Shops for the wife or significant other while you golf? Not here.

Lively nightlife with shows and sights to explore? Uh, no.

Green fees of $450 a person? (The current rate at Pebble.) Bandon is a third of that.

What makes up the greatness of Bandon Dunes is three outstanding courses: Brandon Dunes by Scotsman David Kidd, Pacific Dunes by American Tom Doak, and Brandon Trails by Crenshaw and Bill Coore.

The first two are directly on the Pacific Ocean with all the challenges and beauty of an oceanside course, and the Trails is laid out among soaring towering Pines and old growth lumber. Each course is walking only except for the severe medical cases with a large corps of trained, helpful caddies to assist you around the golfing challenge.



Add a massive practice center and one-acre putting green, where you can access as many balls as you want to hit with just your room key. There are charming golf pubs and 19th holes on-site where you relive the glories and horrors of each days rounds (a second 18 holes is heavily discounted), plus a hearty dining restaurant for a good meal at night, and a card or conversation table in each room to tell golf war stories until your tired enough to sleep, then repeat the same glorious cycle all over again.

The entire golf oasis is the brain child of Chicago greeting card executive Mike Keiser, who loved the classic courses of Scotland and Ireland and refused to believe that American golfers wouldn’t trek to an exacting copy in the states. That’s why he took the chance on Architect Kidd who had never designed a course in America. He ignored the critics who said remote Southern Oregon would never sustain the rounds needed to make the resort a success and the naysayers who said people wouldn’t gladly walk in the Oregon rain and wind to play a true links golfing experience.

Wrong, wrong and wrong.

Kidd designed the par 72 Brandon Dunes course (which opened in 1999) looking like it had been here for a hundred years or so, just waiting for somebody to put 18 flag sticks into the ground. Eight of the holes offer direct ocean access, with others a wildly challenging links layout with holes moving in every direction and the tangled rough putting the premium on accurate driving. The wind seems to gust non-stop on the buckled green grass fairways, but with nine holes on the ocean and nine others curving in every direction it may be responsible for the single most fun and challenging round of my humble golf career.

Doak, who had the reputation as the child rebel of American golf architecture, got the assignment for designing Pacific Dunes in 2001 and he surpassed Kidd’s impressive work with a brilliant par 71 combination of land and sea. Having to follow that dynamic duo was a tall order for Crenshaw and Coore, but they proved to be up to the task in 2005 with a par 71 course which seems supersized among the hung timbers and dense moss and shrubbery.

The par 4 14th hole can sum up the entire Bandon Dunes experience. It’s only 305 yards from the back tee shooting straight downhill with a narrow green which slopes away in all directions. “Not fair” is the common term heard from those who have played this tight layout.

“Around here, we call ‘fair’ the ‘F word’ when he comes to golf,” Doak said in the great book on the founding of Bandon Dunes, Dream Golf.

Indeed. You want fair? You want plush course conditions and fancy accommodations? You want plenty of non-golf activities? There are more than enough places you can find them, just thankfully not here.

You want pure golf with your friends, family and business associates, underpriced for the experience and off the chart on the challenge meter, get to Bandon Dunes in a hurry.
BTPB. Let’s just hope it never changes.