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MOUNT ENTERPRISE, Texas — As storied architect Tom Doak canvassed one of his latest projects on a scorching day in remote East Texas earlier this summer, he couldn’t help but be excited by the landscape that sprawled out before him.

“It’s unlike any property I’ve worked on in the last 10 years,” Doak says.

That land is 2,400 rolling acres of a former Texas hunting lease that will soon become Wild Spring Dunes, the Lone Star State’s first course by Dream Golf, the powerhouse developers behind Bandon Dunes and Sand Valley Resort.

The facility, which is scheduled for a soft opening of eight holes later this fall and a full 18 by spring 2026, will ultimately house 36 holes. A second layout by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw already has been staked out with construction expected to begin later this year or early next.

The site, roughly two and a half hours southeast of Dallas, also will offer resort lodging behind the 18th green of the Doak course; private cabins and homes; a short course; and long views of the wooded surrounds.

“It will feel like Pinehurst with some elevation changes,” said general manager Mike Abbott, who previously held posts at the Tiger Woods-designed Bluejack National outside Houston and former longtime PGA Tour site TPC-Las Colinas outside Dallas.

“With all due respect, I don’t think Texas has a really great golf resort [yet],” Abbott said. “And I’ve been to most of them. This will be truly special.”

After making three trips to the site over the last four months, Doak agreed.

“The changes in the topography and transitions are what really get me excited here,” Doak said. “I certainly get some Pinehurst, even Pine Valley, vibes.”

Construction on the Doak course, which will be a par-72 that stretches to nearly 7,120 yards from the back tees, has been ongoing this year. The development of private housing, along with resort lodging and clubhouse, will begin next year.

The Doak course starts out with a gentle dogleg par-4, near the top of what locals call Mt. Baldy. There are sweeping views of the valley below with carries over brush and dry gullies, with a spring seeping up from the ground that inspired the course’s name.

Eleven bridges link the property together. Abbott said the course will be walking only (with caddies on offer) part of the year and permit riding the other half.

Dream Golf has had much success drawing golfers in droves to such remote destinations as coastal Oregon (Bandon Dunes) and central Wisconsin (Sand Valley); Rodeo Dunes, a Dream Golf facility near Denver, will open later this year. The piney woods of East Texas, where temperatures are regularly in the 90-100 degree range in the summer, follow the same if-you-build-it-they-will-come pattern.

The land for Wild Spring Dunes was discovered by Dallas businessman Brett Messerall, who first contacted Doak. Messerall and his team, inspired by a trip to Sand Valley, contacted developer Michael Keiser. Michael was already overseeing significant expansion at Sand Valley and a new build, Rodeo Dunes, in Colorado. When he visited the Texas site, he fell in love with the land and Doak’s vision for it.

Doak had already worked with Keiser on the Lido and Sedge Valley in Wisconsin, so there was a familiarity and sense of direction for both the designer and the developer.

While there is no private real estate for sale at Bandon Dunes and very little at Sand Valley, Wild Spring Dunes will break from that mold. Dream Golf already is selling “founders” lots that will be paired with the kind of top-shelf hospitality for which Discovery Land properties have become known.

“The service will be off the charts,” Abbott said.

Safe bet the whole place will be.

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With five 18-hole courses, two short courses and a putting course, Bandon Dunes Golf Resort is a golfing smorgasbord on the southern Oregon coast. And there’s a long line at the buffet.

Reservations book up quickly.

But once you’re in, you’re in for all the golf that you can eat. Out at sunrise, wrapping up a dusk. Bandon tradition calls for all-day feasts.

Come nightfall, though, there’s time to digest as you argue with your buddies over which parts of the property are best.

Ranking the courses. That’s another fine tradition. Everyone has an opinion, and no one’s wrong (though if you go by GOLF magazine’s rating system, the order goes like this: Pacific Dunes, Bandon Dunes, Bandon Trails, Old MacDonald, Sheep Ranch).

And if you’re really feeling feisty, you can get more granular by ranking the holes. 

That’s what happened during a recent episode of the Destination Golf podcast, which was devoted entirely to Bandon Dunes and included a back-and-forth on the holes at Bandon that are closet to my and Simon’s heart.

My list leaned heavily on short par 4s. I’m partial to the 6th at Pacific Dunes, with its narrow, angled green, draped over a dune and guarded by yawning bunker, as well as the 16th at Bandon Dunes, a seaside beauty that rightly ranks among the game’s most photographed holes. My list also included the par-5 3rd at Bandon Trails, which starts at the edge of the dunes and spills into what feels like an enchanted forest, its fairway pocked by strategically placed bunkers. If you think of golf as a journey through a landscape, this hole fits the picture perfectly.

I ticked off others, as did Simon, whose first choice came from The Preserve, the older of Bandon’s two par-3 courses. Simon is particularly fond of the 9th hole, 130 yards to a green backed in the distance by the Pacific and shadowed on the left by the shoulder of a dune.

You can listen to the entire Bandon podcast episode here and come back with commentary if you’d like.

What’s your favorite hole? Maybe your answer is the same as that of Grant Rogers, Bandon’s longtime director of instruction. 

His response, when he’s been posed the question, has never varied: “Whatever hole I’m on.”

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If you were tasked with building a Mount Rushmore of 21-century American golf, aimed at celebrating the game’s most influential figures of the past generation, who would you choose?

Tiger Woods for sure.

But another must wouldn’t be a Tour pro. It would be a pioneering course developer who has transformed the recreational game for the better by flying in the face of industry convention.

The USGA would be right there with you. Instead of erecting a monument to Mike Keiser, though, the association has opted to bestow him with its highest honor. In an announcement Sunday, the governing body named Keiser, 79, as the recipient of its 2025 Bobby Jones Award, which recognizes those who embody the character, sportsmanship and respect for the game represented by its namesake.

“What inspires us about Mike is his love for what is pure and good about the game, his investment in golf that’s open to the public, his drive to promote recreational golf and the joy he feels when he plays — and those strong commitments have never wavered,” said Mike Whan, the USGA’s CEO, in a written statement accompanying the news. “We’re grateful for the example he’s set, which pushes the entire industry to think bigger.”

Like the Bobby Jones Award, which has been handed out annually since 1955, Keiser’s ties to golf go back a ways. Born in East Aurura, N.Y., in 1945, he picked up the game as a kid, caddied throughout much of his youth and competed on the golf team at Amherst College. Service in the U.S. Navy came next, followed by a successful career in Chicago as the co-founder of a recycled greeting card business. 

All the while, his love of golf burned on. Nowhere did he love playing it more than in the British isles and Ireland. As Keiser, has recounted many times over the years, he often marveled at how different it felt to shoot in the 80s on a classic links like Ballybunion or Royal Dornoch than it did to card the same score on what was then the typical over-watered, tree-lined American resort course. The latter experience left him dispirited. The former made him want to go back for more.

In 1989, Keiser’s passion for the game in its raw and rugged form inspired him to build a course of his own, the Dunes Club, a 9-hole layout on lakefront land in Michigan that he didn’t want to see consumed by condos. Inspired by the tenets of Golden Age design, the Dunes Club was well-regarded by those who got to see it. But it was not a household name. Neither was Keiser.

That changed, of course, in 1999, with the opening of Bandon Dunes. That Bandon was destined for runaway success only became obvious in retrospect. In its early stages, skeptics abounded, and no wonder: a walking-only course on a hard-to-get to stretch of the Oregon coast with no spa and few frills beyond a pub and a whiskey bar, was everything the American golf market wasn’t. 

The rest is well-told history. The ripple effects of Bandon have swept across the country and overseas, giving rise to great lay-of-the-land courses in locales as far-ranging as the sand barrens of Wisconsin, the shores of Nova Scotia, New Zealand and beyond. Many of those projects bear Keiser’s personal imprint; others are clear outgrowths of his influence.

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In its announcement, the USGA praised Keiser for pairing his work with a commitment to giving back. The founder of the Judge Lytle Scholarship for scholar athletes at his high school alma mater in Buffalo, established in honor of a former classmate and teammate, Keiser is also a generous supporter of the Evans Scholar Foundation, which helps high school-age caddies earn college scholarships. Net proceeds from the par-3 courses at Bandon Dunes are donated to environmental and community programs. 

In citing his own influences, Keiser has often mentioned Dick Youngscap, the developer of Sand Hills, a Nebraska course that stands as an early example of what is known today as “destination golf.” But unlike Sand Hills, Keiser’s projects since the Dunes Club have all been open to the public, another reflection of his convictions.

“If you build something special,” Keiser has said, “you want the public to play it.”

Fittingly, Bandon Dunes and the USGA have established a relationship that calls for the resort to host 13 USGA championships over the next 24 years, including the Walker Cup, the Curtis Cup, and both the U.S. Amateur and, later this year, U.S. Women’s Amateur. 

The Bobby Jones Award will be formally presented to Keiser during U.S. Open week in Pittsburgh this summer.

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Golf is booming in a lot of places, but few spots have exploded like Bandon Dunes.

Twenty-five years since it opened with a single course and a rustic lodge on a lonely stretch of the Oregon coast, the pioneering resort has built four additional 18-holers, two par-3 courses and a fan base so fervid that demand often outstrips supply, with bookings routinely selling out more than a year in advance.

It’s a good problem to have, but Bandon has found a fresh way to give all would-be guests a fair shake at landing a room. In an email blast this week, the resort announced that it has adopted a new process for accepting reservations for 2026 that calls to mind ticket lotteries for such high-demand sporting events as the Masters or Ryder Cup.

With the switch, Bandon has divided 2026 into three reservation periods (January-April; May-September; and October-December), each with a registration window and a random drawing to determine the order of reservations requests.

Registration is now open online for all three time periods. The window for the January-April 2026 period will close on Dec. 22, 2024, while the windows for the May-September and October-December 2026 slots will close on Jan.19, 2025, and April 20, 2025, respectively. Golfers whose entries are selected will receive an email notifying them of their place in line, and then a call from a Bandon reservationist when it comes time to book.

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In the email, the resort described the change as part of its “ongoing effort to adapt and provide the best possible guest experience” during a time of staggeringly high demand. While Bandon has been a popular destination almost since its birth, its draw has become especially magnetic in recent years, intensified by the surge in post-pandemic play. The resort’s policy has long been to finalize all bookings over the phone, and those lines have frequently been flooded with calls for reservations that, depending on the season, have been made available up to 18 months in advance.

Given the resort’s large inventory of courses, landing a tee time is often less challenging than nabbing one of the property’s 210 guest rooms, and many visitors have found that they can still book rounds if they are willing to stay off site. Bandon has been steadily building out its accommodations over the years, and is currently constructing more lodging near Old Macdonald, one of its five 18-hole courses, though a completion date for that work has not yet been announced.

“Over the past year we’ve been working on our future reservations processes,” Jeff Simonds, Bandon’s general manager, told GOLF.com. “Our hold times for 2025 reservations were extremely long, and we’ve been working to adapt and improve the process for everyone. We tested a similar random drawing and outbound booking approach for the fourth quarter of 2025 and found that it saved guests and our team significant time. It’s all about striving to provide the best possible guest booking experience.” 

If you’re looking to visit in 2025 and have not had any luck finding an opening, you can still inquire about tee times for your desired dates and ask to be placed on the waitlist for room reservations. Then, as insurance, book lodging off-site.

As for 2026, well, now you know what to do.

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In Florida, big-name courses abound, and another is now in the works.

Dream Golf, the developer of Bandon Dunes and Sand Valley, among other headline destinations, has announced that it has received approval to move forward with Old Shores, a new golf development on the Florida Panhandle, anchored by an 18-hole public course. Like other Dream Golf properties, Old Shores will put an A-list architect to work on a primo site. Tom Doak has been hired to design the course, on sandy acreage, tasked with creating what Dream Golf’s Michael Keiser said will be a “golf experience similar to our favorite places in Scotland.”

“It’s a prehistoric site that feels otherworldly because of its uniqueness,” Keiser said. “Old Shores is designed to feel geographically ambiguous — you can’t really tell where you are. That helps to create an exciting experience.”

The news comes in the midst of a busy time for Keiser and his brother, Chris, who run day-to-day operations at Dream Golf, a company that owes its origins to their father, Bandon Dunes developer, Mike Keiser. Under the Keiser brothers’ direction, Dream Golf has continued adding courses and amenities to Bandon Dunes on the Oregon coast, and Sand Valley in central Wisconsin, while embarking on two other resort developments: Rodeo Dunes in Colorado, and Wild Spring Dunes in Texas, both of which are now under construction.

With a development order recently green-lit by Washington County, Fla., Dream Golf can continue to build on its bulging portfolio. The property is situated roughly 30 miles north of the Panama City airport, readily accessible from the 30A corridor, which runs along Florida’s golf-rich Gulf Coast.

A timetable for construction has yet to be announced. For more information, visit oldshores.com

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U.S. Open Qualifying is often referred to by Golf Channel as “Golf’s Longest Day,” but golf’s actual longest day is taking place Tuesday on the southeastern coast of Oregon.

Only this version is less of a grind and more a celebration of the sickest of golf sickos.

While the actual summer solstice, the longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere and the astronomical start of summer, is Thursday, more than 100 golfers at Bandon Dunes are getting the party started early with the 14th annual Bandon Solstice.

With first-round tee times starting at 5:25 a.m. PDT (before Tuesday’s official sunrise at Bandon of 5:37 a.m.), each Bandon Solstice player will play 72 holes of golf Tuesday on four of the resort’s five courses.

For this year’s Bandon Solstice, groups are playing Bandon Dunes, Bandon Trails, Old MacDonald and Sheep Ranch, which are all within GOLF’s Top 100 U.S. Courses list. The foursomes each start on different courses, with two waves going off the front and back nines of the Bandon Dunes golf course and work their around the four courses.

The day starts with a breakfast buffet at 4:30 a.m. (!!!) and includes lunch after your second round. You know what they say, nothing hits like the mid-round hot dog, especially when “mid-round” is after your 36th hole of the day.

Groups typically finish all four rounds around 8 to 8:30 p.m., before Tuesday’s sunset of 9 p.m. PT. Perhaps there’s even enough time for players to have an “E9” putting contest on the resort’s Punchbowl putting course. That is if they can still stand of course.

That adds up to a pretty stout pace. For the 2017 Bandon Solstice, the resort said rounds were completed in about a 3-hour-and-15-minute pace.

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Luckily, players typically don’t carry their own bags. One of the resort’s talented caddies will carry two bags for two rounds and then be replaced. It still ends up being a pretty lucrative day for them as the caddie rate is $100 per bag, per round, plus gratuity.

Think you have the stamina to go four rounds at Bandon in one? It doesn’t come cheap. Prices for this year’s Bandon Solstice were $2,005 per person for a double occupancy room and $2,345 per person for a single occupancy room or a shared two-bedroom loft. That’s in addition to the caddies.

That package comes with two nights of lodging for the night before the event and the night of, a welcome reception and dinner the night before, four rounds of golf for the event, breakfast the morning of the event and the morning after and dinner after the event.

You can register as a twosome or a foursome and as long as person from each foursome fills out a registration, you can enter as many foursomes as you like, you just better do it fast. Last year, registration took place in mid-November and the event was sold out within minutes.

If you do happen to sign up, just remember, this writer, who during his only visit to the resort played just one of the 18-hole golf courses, is available if you need a fourth.

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If three golf resorts is good, then four is better.

At least that’s the word from the Keiser family — masterminds behind Bandon Dunes — on this Memorial Day Weekend, the same time they announced the creation of Wild Spring Dunes, a brand-new public golf resort at the intersections of Dallas, Houston and Shreveport, La.

The new facility marks the fourth property in the family’s burgeoning golf empire, following in the footsteps of the wildly successful Bandon Dunes and Sand Valley properties. Wild Spring Dunes will be part of the Keiser family’s second “phase” of golf resorts, announced a year after the heavily anticipated (and still-under-construction) Rodeo Dunes property on the outskirts of Denver.

Like the remainder of the resorts in the Keiser family portfolio, Wild Spring Dunes will be a full-service, publicly accessible golf resort with luxury on-site accommodations and food options. But as always, the golf will be the main attraction — and at Wild Spring Dunes, there’s lots to be excited about. The Keisers have already received a routing from revered course architect Tom Doak for one 18-hole routing on the property, and legendary tandem Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw are nearing completion on a second. A third short course is also expected on the property, though design details about that have yet to be released. You could forgive the Keisers for being overeager about the property, but they say the 2,400-acre site has echoes of Pine Valley, Pinehurst and Shoreacres (not bad company!).

“This land surprised me,” Michael Keiser, namesake and oldest son of the family’s elder statesman, said in a release. “I would never have imagined this kind of property in Texas. The pine forests. The steep ravines. The big hills surrounding it. You walk the site, and it’s always changing, and you can see golf holes on every part of it. Founders are going to be surprised and excited by Wild Spring Dunes the same way I was.”

The excitement surrounding the property comes in large part from the four “distinct” ecosystems Keiser notes: forest, meadows, hills and ravines. But some of it should also come from location. Texas has been less fertile ground for golf development over the last few decades, even as course designs have boomed in more remote corners of the United States, and the Keiser family’s investment represents the first true competitor to the esteemed Omni Barton Creek facility in the state’s resort golf scene. The new property rests on a relatively remote plot of land roughly two hours from Dallas, Houston and Shreveport, but its proximity to those cities (and their large international travel hubs) means travel to the new site will pale in comparison to the epic journeys required of, say, Bandon Dunes.

As the Keisers have done in other resort developments, a “Founders Membership” program will exist with Wild Spring Dunes, granting a slew of benefits to those who wish to contribute a $65,000 refundable deposit. Among the headliners: Early access to the property, preferred real estate selections and exclusive rights to golf privileges like tee times, tournaments and lodging.

For the rest of us, though, the excitement will be limited mostly to online photos and updates via the resort’s official website and the social media accounts of its parent company, Dream Golf. An opening date for the site has not yet been announced, but it’s safe to say that Wild Spring Dunes will open well after the Keiser family’s next project, Rodeo Dunes, which is expected to debut by early 2025.

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Bandon Dunes Golf Resort, which is celebrating its 25-year anniversary this month, has exploded to five 18-hole courses, two short courses — one that’s officially opening right now — and a rollicking putting course.

Here’s a look at Bandon Dunes 25 years later — which appeared in the latest edition of GOLF magazine — but scroll below to get a quick snapshot of the courses and what makes each unique.

BANDON DUNES

David McLay Kidd, 1999; par 72 / 6,732 yds

The original course at Bandon remains its anchor, its first hole lighting out from behind the main clubhouse on a thrilling path, up into the dunes then down toward the coast. With wide landing areas and large, mellowly contoured greens, McLay Kidd’s design can be forgiving, but it has also held up to elite USGA competitions.

PACIFIC DUNES

Tom Doak, 2001; par 71 / 6,633 yds

When it opened in 2001, this unconventional Doak design, with a back nine that starts with consecutive par 3s, transformed its architect from a cult darling into a modern minimalist star. It also proved Keiser’s mantra — “One course is a curiosity, two courses is a destination” — true, providing the resort with a one-two punch that magnified its presence on the map.

BANDON TRAILS

Bill Coore / Ben Crenshaw, 2005; par 71 / 6,788 yds

The only 18-hole course at the resort that doesn’t kiss the ocean, this Coore-Crenshaw design makes up for its lack of coastline with an enchanting tour of its inland terrain. From dunes to pines to meadows, the backdrops are as varied and intriguing as the shot-making demands, nowhere more than on the par-4 14th, one of Bandon’s most compelling — and polarizing — holes.

OLD MACDONALD

Tom Doak / Jim Urbina, 2010; par 71 / 6,944 yds

A tribute in both name and form, this Doak-Urbina collaboration draws on a portfolio of template holes made famous in this country by the Golden Age giant Charles Blair Macdonald. The Redan. The Long. The Short. The Eden. There’s even a hat tip to the Road Hole at St. Andrews on a course that plays, in true links fashion, on firm, fast fescue turf.

SHEEP RANCH

Bill Coore / Ben Crenshaw, 2020; par 72 / 6,636 yds

The smallest 18-hole course at the resort also features the longest stretch of coastline, roughly a mile of seaside bluffs. On this site, which is also the windiest on the property and, partly for that reason, has no sand bunkers, Bill Coore’s inventive routings squeeze every drama from the ocean, bringing it into play on several tees shots and into view on all 18.

BANDON PRESERVE

Bill Coore / Ben Crenshaw, 2012; par 3 / 1,609 yds

Like many trends in the modern game, the short-course craze traces back to Bandon. Built in 2012, this 13-hole par-3 design by Coore and Crenshaw captures the beauty of the property in miniature, with no shot longer than 150 yards and ground-game options that include the local custom of playing the final hole with only putter.

THE PUNCHBOWL

Tom Doak / Jim Urbina, 2014; 18-hole putting course

Drive for show, putt for free. There is no charge to play this 100,000-square-foot nod to the Himalayas putting course at St. Andrews, situated to the left of the first tee at Pacific Dunes. Designed by Doak and Urbina and open from dawn to dusk, it is filled with beguiling humps and hollows, and its routing never gets old because the staff alters it every day.

SHORTY’S

Dave Axland, Keith Cutten, Rod Whitman, 2024; par 3 / 1,997 yds

On a site heaving with tall, tightly clustered dunes, Whitman, Axland and Cutten first drafted a 12-hole course, only to realize the canvas encouraged more. Their final design stitched 19 holes, ranging from 60 to 160 yards, into the folds. With the course’s arrival, the original Shorty’s, a pitch-and-putt adjacent to the resort’s practice facility, has been renamed Charlotte’s Par 3.

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Let’s take a trip in the wayback machine to a long ago gray morning on the Oregon coast: May 2, 1999. A light rain is falling. A brisk breeze is blowing off the water. And a 2-iron of a man named Mike Keiser is greeting golfers on the first tee of a rugged-looking layout, gifting everyone he meets with a commemorative coin. Each marker bears the image of a tufted puffin, a logo that will grow into an icon.

It’s opening day at Bandon Dunes.

Given the way things are in recreational golf today, it’s easy to forget how different things were then, and how sharply Bandon broke from what had come before it.

For decades, public access courses in this country had largely been developed as real estate plays or lush amenities to frill-filled resorts close to major population centers. Golfers buzzed around in carts and lost balls by the box load. Errant shots that didn’t land in artificial lakes risked smashing the windows of neighboring homes.

In Keiser’s eyes, this was not golf as it was meant to be or anything like what he aimed to create. With a fortune earned in recycled greeting cards and a vision shaped by golf trips to Ireland and Scotland, he’d set out to revive the game’s rustic, windswept spirit in a market that had stifled it with waterfalls and buggies. To realize his dream, he’d further shirked convention by acquiring seaside land in an outlier location, a few miles north of the sleepy town of Bandon, Ore., and hiring as his designer a young, untested Scotsman named David McLay Kidd.

“I was full of piss and vinegar at the time,” McLay Kidd says. “But aside from confidence, I didn’t have a lot to show for myself.”

Keiser wasn’t shy on self belief, either. But in quieter moments, he couldn’t help but wonder if the skeptics — and there were many — might be right about walking-only golf exposed to coastal elements on a course situated at the edge of nowhere. He was going to build it, but would anybody come?

The answer arrived sooner than expected. Of the 144 golfers invited to the ribbon cutting, 25 years ago this month, there was only one no-show in the dreary weather. The reviews were glowing, in person and in print. Afforded a sneak peek, GOLF magazine described the land as “the finest made available for a golf course in America since Alister MacKenzie was shown the site for the Cypress Point.” In another publication, a giddy scribe confessed that the course gave him the urge to sprint down the fairways naked. He meant that in a good way.

The point was that Bandon had awakened something primal. It had taken the old and made it new again, meeting a demand for a throwback form of golf that had been ignored for so long that people had forgotten it even existed.

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In that first year, Keiser hoped the course would draw 10,000 rounds, a number he figured he needed to break even; it wound up registering 25,000.

“After that full tee sheet on opening day, I was optimistic,” Keiser says now. “But after that first year, I was absolutely astonished.”

And clear in his conviction that a single course was not enough. “One plus one equals three” was Keiser’s formulation (even his approach to simple math was different), the idea being that a second layout would bring exponential benefits to the resort. As most avid golfers know, Bandon today is home not to two but five 18-hole courses (Bandon Dunes, Pacific Dunes, Bandon Trails, Old Macdonald and Sheep Ranch) and a par-3 course (Bandon Preserve) with another short course (Shorty’s) set to open this month. Among the striking features of that growth is how faithful the resort has stayed to its founding ethos: that great golf doesn’t require fancy extras. Even if wagyu beef has joined “Grandma’s meat loaf” among the menu items, everything at Bandon revolves around the game and the fellowship, fresh air and challenge that come with it. You can book a massage, but you can’t hit the spa because there isn’t one. Most guests rise at daybreak, play until exhaustion, then get up the next morning and do it again.

Meanwhile, beyond its property lines, Bandon has inspired profound change. In a once-flagging region whose two main industries — fishing and logging — had sputtered, the resort has become a vital economic engine, the second-largest employer in the county, after the hospital system. And then there is its impact on the game itself.

Even as it broke a mold, Bandon offered a fresh template for “destination” golf. That world-class courses now extend from the sand barrens of Wisconsin and the shores of Nova Scotia to Saint Lucia, Tasmania, Norway and beyond owes largely to a pioneering project on the Oregon coast.

“It flipped everything,” says the architect Bill Coore, who, with his design partner, Ben Crenshaw, had a hand in many of those courses, including three at Bandon. “We take it for granted these days that if you find a great site and build great golf on it, golfers will come see it, no matter how far they have to go. But if you said that before Bandon, a lot of people would have said you’d lost your mind.”

As Bandon now prepares to mark a major anniversary, it is also getting ready for another ribbon cutting at its new 19-hole par-3 course Shorty’s. What the weather has in store is anyone’s guess. But this much is certain: A large crowd of Bandon loyalists will be on hand. So will Mike Keiser, greeting guests and handing out commemorative coins.

“Has it really been 25 years?” Keiser says. “To me, it actually feels like we’ve been around much longer.”

No wonder, really. Bandon fits so naturally into the landscape, it almost seems to have been there from the start.

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The post The country’s most exclusive golf club? It might surprise you appeared first on Golf.

What’s the most exclusive golf club in the country? Before you suggest one of the usual suspects — Cypress Point, Augusta National, Shinnecock Hills and so on — allow us to nominate a lesser-known contender, headquartered in a quiet coastal town in Oregon that has gained an outsize presence in the game.

As with a lot of hard-to-access clubs, the membership is tiny, a roster of 60, with nearly as many on the waiting list. It’s not a snobby outfit. The right bloodlines and bankroll aren’t required for entry. But the rules are rigid.

Not just anyone gets to join the Bandon Golf Club.

“We always say we have the best deal in the world of golf,” club president David Miller says.

The terms of that deal include special privileges at a nearby resort with a similar name. Though Bandon Golf Club is not to be confused with Bandon Dunes Golf Resort, the two are inseparable, connected since birth.

The origin story goes like this. When Bandon Dunes opened, 25 years ago this month, the Oregon Golf Association and the United States Golf Association both expressed interest in someday holding amateur tournaments on the grounds. For a property to stage such competitions, protocol says it needs an affiliated club.

“And because we wanted to make sure we did things the right way, we started one,” says Josh Lesnik of KemperSports, which has managed the resort since opening day.

The membership bylaws were simple but strict. To be eligible to join, you had to reside in either Coos County, where Bandon is situated, or neighboring Curry County, and you had to be a member of the local Chamber of Commerce.

As the head of a family-run timber company that has been in the area for four generations, David Miller fit the bill. He also happened to be an avid golfer. At the time, nearby outlets for the game were scarce. Miller was a member of Coos Golf Club, a then 9-hole course (it has since expanded to 18 holes) 30 minutes up the coast. The town of Bandon also had a scruffy 9-hole layout. But otherwise, nada.  

Joining the Bandon Golf Club sure sounded good. Miller signed on as a president. Two other local businessmen joined to form a three-person board, and together they helped round up 25 founding members.

Annual dues were $175. The benefits were worth much more: every Tuesday throughout the year (and Monday through Thursday in April, May, June, July and December), club members could play at Bandon for the highly discounted rate of $35. A quarter-century later, that arrangement remains the same, except for the greens fee, which has soared to $50. These days, the general public pays $110 to $350 to play at Bandon, depending on the season.

Over that same period, as most serious golfers know, Bandon Dunes has grown exponentially, now with five 18-hole courses and two par-3 courses, while emerging as one of the game’s marquee destinations. Bandon Golf Club, meanwhile, has barely budged in scale. Only a few dozen extras have been brought into the fold. More people would like in.

But, Miller says, “we’ve kept it pretty small.”

In many ways, it’s like any other club. It has a logo — the tufted puffin, the original mascot of Bandon Dunes, with “Bandon Golf Club” written beside it — which gets printed on caps, shirts and other swag. And it holds annual events, including a club championship that Miller has won a couple of times against competition that isn’t always fierce. Most Bandon Golf Club members are better-known as business leaders and community volunteers than they are for being serious sticks.

Among them is Beth Wood, who moved to Bandon in the mid-1980s with her husband, Ed, and for decades ran a cookware store in town. A relatively latecomer to the game, Wood took to it with gusto when she joined the Bandon Golf Club, enjoying all the perks, which include the right to bring six guests a year. Wood used to get out weekly, and though she has cut back on that frequency in recent years (“We’re all getting older,” she says), she wouldn’t dream of giving up her membership, the dues for which are now $400 a year. She knows how coveted it is.

“Spots really only open when someone dies or leaves,” Wood says.

And no one wants to do either of those.

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