Among the many signs of golf addiction is a fondness for tracking courses-in-the-making, from the date of groundbreaking to opening day.
If you betray that symptom, face it, you’re a junkie, and we’ve got a bulletin for you. It involves Wild Spring Dunes, a new headliner in destination golf.
Given your, um, let’s call it a passion, not a compulsion, for the game, you probably know the basics. But here’s a refresher, just in case. Wild Spring Dunes is the latest project from Sand Valley co-developer Michael Keiser, and it is taking shape in the sandy wilds of East Texas — roughly equidistant from Dallas and Houston, and 72 miles from Shreveport, La. The property sprawls across more than 2,400 acres of dunes, meadows and spring-fed creeks, where Tom Doak has stitched a routing through the rumpled terrain.
Eight holes of that course are now complete, and preview play begins on them Nov. 12.
Call it a first taste, with plenty more to come. A second course, by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, is already being cleared. Plans also call for a short course, a putting course and a state-of-the-art practice facility, all part of an emergent golf resort and community. Privately owned cottages and estate homes are already available. A clubhouse and lodge are in the works as well. Though golf will be the main draw, the property will also offer fishing and hiking, among other outdoor activities.
For Keiser, the son of Bandon Dunes founder Mike Keiser, the news comes in the midst of a busy stretch as he moves forward on two other major golf developments: Rodeo Dunes, just outside Denver, where preview play was staged on 11 holes this summer, and Old Shores in the panhandle of Florida, currently in pre-construction.
For golf junkies, the progress at Wild Springs Dunes is something else to watch — and play. More information is available here.
