Jay Flemma

Four Great Places You Have to Play
September 24, 2005

The great American golf vacation is deeply woven into our national fabric. It is a way of life — our great panacea from the tribulations of our working lives.

Sure everyone dreams of Pebble Beach and Pinehurst for their getaway, but the second Golden Age of golf architecture is upon us and brilliant courses featuring stunning settings, inspired strategic routings and affordable prices are being built each year.

Many of them won't break the bank, not even for a vacationing family of four.

Make this year's vacation the year to explore some of our country's newly-minted treasures and unsung hidden gems. Here are some of the best places you probably have not played (or perhaps even heard of), but must play as soon as you can

A. Oregon

With the exception of Sawgrass, Bandon Dunes Golf Resort, is the most important golf facility to open in America since Pebble Beach.

Located five hours south of Portland on the rugged Oregon coast, there is no more authentic public-access links experience in the country

Photo: © Sal Johnson The par-4, 13th at Pacific Dunes has the ocean on the left and a giant Sand Dune on the right.

Conceived and executed in harmony with the natural ecosystem, three epic courses — designed respectively by David McKay Kidd, Tom Doak and Ben Crenshaw with Bill Coore — sit on a beautiful stretch of linksland above the pounding Pacific surf, framed by the Oregon tall pines.

Spectacular sixty foot dunes covered in gorse, fescue and native vegetation frame the inland holes while the seaside holes play along the clifftops with the Pacific lapping their feet.

Greens and tees hang brazenly on precipices. Fairways meander through fragrant gorse and a towering cityscape of dunes on sandy soil. A true attribute of links golf, the ever present ocean winds are always a factor.

Pacific Dunes, perhaps the strongest track at the resort, showcases two of Doak's classic design features, undulating crowned greens and ground game friendly designs.

Many of his green are canted in one direction and intentionally set up to welcome a particular shot shape, which in turn makes players have to find the correct part of the fairway off the tee for an optimum approach to the green.

Photo: © Jay Flemma The par-3 11th green sits right on the cliffside at Pacific Dunes.

Doak also loves to break the mold which stifled golf course design for decades with unusual par schemes and routings.

Looking at the scorecard and map of Pacific Dunes, it looks nothing like any normal golf course. While many architects have been a slave to the par 72 format of 36 on the front, 36 on the back and two par-5s each side and two par-3s each side design concept, possibly even limiting themselves to two loops of nine, the first tee at Pacific Dunes leads past the clubhouse and you do not see it again until the eighteenth.

Because Doak laid out the holes where the land dictated they should be, the front nine par of 36 features only one par-5 and one par-3. The back, with a par of 35, features four par-3s (including two back-to-back at 10 and 11) and three par-5s.

Photo: © Sal Johnson The par-4 5th hole at Bandon Dunes could be the best hole in the whole resort.

The yardage appears easily manageable, but again looks are deceiving. On the card, the tips measure 6633 yards (there are two sets further back that are not listed) and the regulation tees measure only 6142.

Moreover, in a brilliant coup of routing, the holes constantly move in different directions, keeping the player off balance; they will hit every club with many shot shapes from all angles of the prevailing wind.

A golf resort to end all arguments and a career experience, Bandon Dunes is the closest thing to a terra incognita golf adventure as can be found anywhere.

Some people play golf their whole lives and never see any course as spectacular, serene or seductive. Soon the resort will take its rightful place as the heart of our national golf identity.

Because of the still affordable price, the remoteness of the locale and the primal, natural designs, we are privileged to live in the heady, prosperous days of a nascent golf scene, so get there quickly.

In shoulder seasons, one round is as little as $70, with half-price replays. If there is a shortcoming, resort accommodations get pricey at $140-$300 per night. The more affordable Lodge rooms are spartanly furnished. Packages are available and change each season.

Photo: © Jay Flemma The long par-4 4th at Pacific Dunes may be the most difficult hole on the course.

With Portland as a likely point of entry, golfers can easily add the rustic and idyllic strategic track at Pumpkin Ridge (Ghost Creek course) to their itinerary. Experts love the varied shot shaping requirements and classic feel of the course while the bucolic farmlands, meadows and streams comfort the errant shots of average players. The facility hosted the 1996 U.S Amateur won by Tiger Woods and the 1997 U.S. Women's Open.

At Sandpines — directly on the road to Bandon and just an hour north of the resort — Rees Jones seamlessly wove eighteen holes through the dunescape covered with beautiful native grasses and through corridors of tall Oregon Pines. The finish is stirring as 16, 17 and 18 play around a large man-made lake and offer terrific risk-reward options.

Next — Boston, Massachusetts