Pacific Dunes

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The short par-4 6th hole features a deep bunker at the left front of the green, hidden in this photo, in combination with a steep slope off the back flank of the green, to reward the player who drives to the right off the tee.
The short 11th plays right along the top of the cliff.
Designed by Tom Doak, the 13th hole of Pacific Dunes at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort is one of the best par 4’s in the world. This image was captured in the late afternoon with an Inspire 2 using the X& camera. Bandon Dunes is one of the top golf destinations in the world.
Late afternoon light on the short par 3 14th hole of Pacific Dunes. A wonderful Tom Doak design at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon and one of the top golf destinations in the world. Beautiful Bandon Dunes photography by Evan Schiller
Looking back down the 16th fairway, the deep hollow to the golfer's right of the green doesn't look so tough, but between that and the bunkers at the back of the green, there's not much room to work with.
The par-3 17th is modeled after the Redan at North Berwick, though the quartering wind from left to right in the summer makes it very hard to play a controlled fade or draw into this green.

Pacific Dunes

Bandon Dunes Resort, OR
2001

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 dreamed I would have the chance to build one in America, on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

While the four oceanfront holes are its most photographed, it was the bowl of dunes further inland that made the property for Pacific Dunes unique, and I managed to find a routing that returns to that area at several different points in the round.  The unusual scorecard means that you never know what kind of hole is coming next, but you know it will be beautiful.

Since opening, the course has hosted the 2006 Curtis Cup Matches, the USGA Public Links Championship, and the USGA Four-Ball, and the two nicest compliments my work has received came from the first two events:  the chair of the Ladies’ Golf Union (England) said Pacific Dunes was “the finest links course I have ever seen,” and one of the competitors at the Public Links said that the first time she came around the corner and saw the fourth hole, she cried because it was so beautiful.