Previous Next Lost Dunes GC Bridgman, MI1999 Building a private golf club on land bisected by a busy Interstate highway sounded like a big ask, and it was. But the site at Lost Dunes had a lot going for it: it was an abandoned sand quarry, with plenty of large lakes left over from the […]
Previous Next Apache Stronghold San Carlos Apache Reservation, Globe, Arizona1999 I’ve been fortunate to work for many interesting clients, but surely none were more interesting that the San Carlos Apache Tribe. They wanted a course that would respect Tribal lands, while attracting customers to their casino and resort, two hours NE of Phoenix; and they
Previous Next Atlantic City CC Northfield, NJ 2000 I’ve always shied away from redesign projects, because you start with 18 holes and end up with 18, and whether the course is any better is strictly a matter of opinion. But the new owners of Atlantic City Country Club caught me at the right time, when
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Previous Next The Village Club of Sands Point Sands Point, NY 2000 The Village Club is a private club but also a municipal course: the old Guggenheim estate was bought by the taxpayers and turned into a club for residents. [Out of towners pay higher annual dues, for whatever spots are left over.] The previous
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Previous Next Pacific Dunes Bandon Dunes Resort, OR2001 My friend Ron Whitten at GOLF DIGEST wrote that Pacific Dunes was the course I was born to build, though its success has paved the way for many more. When I spent my year abroad after college studying the great links of Britain and Ireland, I never
The Sheep Ranch Bandon, OR 2002 Built just after we finished Pacific Dunes, the original version of The Sheep Ranch was the freest of free-form designs, built so that players could choose their own holes, and play from any of the 13 greens to any other. It was a helpful case study for my reversible
Previous Next Stonewall – North Course Elverson, PA 2003 When Gil Hanse and I built the original eighteen holes for Stonewall in 1992, there was no thought of ever building more. But the success of the project made the financial side of expansion easy, and the founders’ fear of having to accommodate older members on
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Previous Next The Rawls Course Texas Tech University Lubbock, TX 2003 On the heels of working on the beautiful site for Pacific Dunes, The Rawls Course was a good reset to reality for my crew, as we had to shape every square inch of a site with 0.1% of tilt from one corner to the
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Previous Next Cape Kidnappers Resort Napier, New Zealand2004 When I first saw the site for Cape Kidnappers, the scale of it took some getting used to. We had just finished building golf holes at Pacific Dunes 100 feet above the Pacific, but from the cliffs at Cape Kidnappers, you look down at Hawke Bay 130
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Previous Next Barnbougle Dunes Bridport, Tasmania, Australia2004 As Mike Keiser said to me, if a golf course project could work in Tasmania, it could work anywhere. And it did! But its success owes little to international players, and more to the fact that avid golfers throughout Australia have fallen in love with links golf, and
