Childress Hall (Upper)

Set in the Texas Panhandle, along a northward bend of the Prairie Dog Town Fork Red River, Childress Hall tumbles through sandhills so wild and windblown they call to mind an alien landscape. Doak barely had to move the earth — the contours were already there — but he found room for his trademark mischief. Take the wonderfully imaginative par-4 10th, with its split fairway: the upper tier is harder to find off the tee but keeps you level with the green with a preferred angle in, while the lower, which winds around a dune, leaves an uphill approach to a perched surface that runs away. Childress, which sprawls across 2,400 acres, will soon cut the ribbon on a Gil Hanse design, making it one of only two properties worldwide, along with Cabot Highlands, to boast 36 holes by Doak and Hanse. Childress, though, is intensely private.