Under / Over / Properly Rated: Bandon Dunes Edition - Henry Shimp
I put out a story last week asking for submissions on an upcoming O/U/P on different golf courses across the US, and one intelligent follower proposed the idea of keeping it to just Bandon Dunes golf courses. I liked that. So here we go.
First things first, while I’ve been clear on not loving the process of ranking golf courses, if we are going to talk about whether a course is over, under, or properly rated, we have to acknowledge where it is ranked. It’s in the name. Now, when it comes to rankings, while there are several rankings systems out there, I’m going to acknowledge where both Golf Digest and Golf.com place each of these Bandon Courses in their respective systems. While they don’t stack rank the 5 Bandon courses quite the same, there are enough consistencies for me to consider how each of them view the 3 courses I will be writing on.
Aside from just a simple O/U/P, I’ll be reporting where each course sits in each rankings system, what the courses are that surround it and why that informs its rating of O/U/P, and where I think it should be in the US Top 100. So, without further delay, let’s get to it.
This is my 3rd favorite course on property, and if the two rankings systems were to properly place my overrated course to come, they would get that right.
Both rankings systems have it as their 4th favorite course on property. I’ve only played it once, but I left my Old Mac experience with more enthusiasm around the course than I expected. You hear things like “the property is really expansive and a bit bland at times,” which is true, but “at times” applies to about 3/18 holes and the rest sit on somewhere between good and stellar pieces of ground. The amount of land movement, gorse, and natural sand on many of the holes is astounding and gives the course as much character as Trails or Pac Dunes. I had envisioned more of a Sheep Ranch style of play where most shots are very open and exposed without a significant amount of governance, but this just isn’t the case.
Tom Doak and Jim Urbina designed Old Macdonald as a course meant to pay homage to CB Macdonald and his famous template courses in the United States, namely National Golf Links of America. Every hole on the course is some flavor of a template and my favorite part of this is how many of them follow the principles of their respective design yet are the best version what was found in the land presented to Doak and Urbina at Old Mac’s site.
While I am not against the manufactured aesthetic of template holes, to marry that with some of the natural templates at Old Mac is spectacular. Not all of them are great. Hole 12 (Redan), would probably be the best example of a template at Old Mac that doesn’t quite do it for me,
The Redan 12th at Old Macdonald, photographed by: WOOD SABOLD PHOTOGRAPHY
but holes 4 (Hog’s Back), 8 (Biarritz), 11 (Road), and 16 (Alps), are up there with any hole at the resort for me.
The Biarritz 8th at Old Macdonald, photographed by: PATRICK KOENIG PHOTOGRAPHY
The Road 11th at Old Macdonald, photographed by: PATRICK KOENIG PHOTOGRAPHY
The Alps 16th at Old Macdonald, photographed by: EVAN SCHILLER PHOTOGRAPHY
The sentiment I often hear around Old Mac can be sadly low at times which I believe is driven by both its difficulty and a lack of understanding of template holes. While Pac Dunes is almost certainly more challenging, Old Mac has far more bite to it than Sheep Ranch and Bandon Dunes, and probably is in a similar camp to Trails depending on how straight you drive the ball. It can get very windy out there and the greens are dramatic enough that your putter is unlikely to save you on a windy day. So many people struggle to cut through the numbers on the scorecard and their personal tabulations on a course’s quality. That coupled with the significance and execution of the template holes being lost on some is why I believe some people leave saying “I don’t get Old Mac.” My reply to that would have to be pretty corroborating… yeah, you don’t get it.
Because I like where Old Mac sits in the ratings, I won’t go through its competitive set or where I think it should otherwise be situated. It’s a top 100 course easily to me, but it’s not top 50. Even 60th or so would feel a bit high but for it to be say 90th and barely sneaky into the top 100 would feel like not enough credit. So, split those two numbers and what do you get? 75th. If we average GD and Golf’s ratings of 77th and 72nd, there you go!
This is a tight one, and a lot of it has to do with GD’s ranking of 65th for Trails and 40th for Bandon Dunes. Dunes is going to get the honor of being my overrated course so for it to be 25 spots ahead of Trails by GD’s account is a tough one in my book.
What I enjoy so much about Trails is its range. From the type of terrain you see with the first and last couple holes being through dunes land and the rest of it being a hike through the Oregon woods. The fact that it will please the architecture buffs as much as any course on property with its quintessential Coore and Crenshaw design, but its quality can be quickly understood by the layman. All the way to the fact that it can be enjoyed by the competitor and casual golfer alike, it’s a golf course that can wear many hats and delivers a consistent, yet exciting product. As I teased above, Trails is a very real golf experience. If you catch a windy day and struggle to hit your driver and long irons straight, you’re going to spend some time in the woods. No two ways about it. That said, as soon as you traverse the forthcoming “trail” that takes you from one secluded hole to the next, you’ll quickly forget about any transgressions that took place on the last hole.
The 2nd and 3rd holes at Bandon Trails, photographed by: GETTY
A big piece of my affinity for Trails is driven by not only its charm and “x’s and o’s” architectural soundness, but also how resolute it stands relative to 4 other courses that are also of extremely high quality and all offer a feature Trails does not. Many or even most people go to Bandon Dunes in search of golf on the ocean and would count that as the defining factor of the resort and its golf courses’ draw. Trails has essentially zero ocean views on a resort that is quite literally built around that very thing which I consider to be the true testament to how cool the golf course is. To be able to stand up to, or above, all but one of the golf courses on property (in my opinion) while having a glaring disadvantage in the eyes of most players speaks to how good the golf course is. It’s like going to a Fried Chicken shack and having the baked chicken be nearly the best thing on the menu. That dish is clearly starting from behind but is just flat out good.
So, what sits above Trails in the ratings that I don’t quite agree with and provides fuel to the underrated fire? There is one consistency in the two rankings systems I’ll call out and one or two unique courses on each ranking that sit a handful of spots ahead that I’m not on board with. To preface, these are all great courses, especially when you start to get to this territory of the rankings, everything is good and I’m not here to tell you these courses aren’t. But, if we’re going to rank courses, let’s try to get them about right!
Starting with the consistency. Sleepy Hollow sits 5 spots ahead of Trails on Golf.com’s ranking and 6 spots ahead on Golf Digest’s. Sleepy is cool and a fun course to play. Great land, great setting, amazing restoration, it’s a hell of a spot. But what doesn’t merit a ranking ahead of Trails is that Sleepy’s best day is much too far above its worst, and some of the features that really catch your attention the first time through prove to be more show than go in successive plays. Those of you who have read my stuff before know that the consistency of an experience and the degree to which a course’s architectural features actually add to the play of the course mean a lot to me, and in those 2 buckets Trails beats out Sleepy handily. We need a flip flop there.
In general, Golf Digest’s rankings makes a lot of sense and no sense to me at the same time. In Trails’ general region we have some really good stuff that I think makes sense, and then somehow 12, 14, and 16 spots ahead of it, respectively, we have Victoria National (are you kidding me?), Whispering Pines, and Nanea. These 3 courses are fringe top 100 courses at best and if it were up to me alone none of them would get the nod. Trails should be around the 40-50 line and somehow 3 completely overrated courses are ahead of it? Come on GD, that just doesn’t make sense.
Golf.com has one other course that I don’t quite agree with being ahead of Trails but outside of that I think treats it very well. At 36th, 4 spots ahead of Trails is Peachtree. Another highly unique experience and a place I feel lucky to have had the chance to play, but it is ultimately a very good course with conditions that blow your socks off. Conditions matter, and can absolutely bolster an experience, but they shouldn’t carry it, and that’s what is going on in my opinion for Peachtree being all the way at 36th. It has a couple really cool holes but ultimately is a +/- 75th sort of course.
Trails is top 50 by a nose. It’s not 30th, 40 from Golf.com isa nice spot, but 65th from GD is not it. Most importantly, leading into my overrated course, for it to sit behind Bandon Dunes in GD’s ranking is brutal. Bandon Dunes is truly an amazing place to get to play, but if we’re talking about the better golf course, it and Trails just don’t compare.
A look at Bandon Dunes from above: Photography by: STEPHEN SZURLEJ PHOTOGRAPHY
Let me start my Bandon Dunes breakdown by describing exactly how I reacted about 6 weeks ago when I played it for the 3rd time.
Upon arriving to the 4th green/5th tee junction “the reveal,” I took a second to look around and soak it in and said to my playing partners “I mean, if this isn’t a special spot to be playing golf, I don’t know what is.” The place is awesome. The setting, the things that golf course trail blazed for the resort and destination golf as a whole, Bandon Dunes is a supremely important golf course in many ways. All that said, I also like to be objective about golf courses and their architectural merits. From that lens, I have a few qualms with the Dunes, and I’ll lay those out in the coming paragraphs.
With this point, I want to be cognizant of the fact that it was the first course at the property, so it didn’t necessarily have any constraints on it, but I don’t love how much land Bandon Dunes took up and the feelings of unnecessary expansiveness you get from it relative to the other courses on property. Trails is the king of intimacy with its literal trails from one hole to the next. Pac Dunes is a top 5 routing I’ve ever played and there is very little wasted land. And Old Mac and Sheep Ranch each follow very logical tee to green cadences and don’t feel at all like there is unnecessary land. Much like I talk about features on courses that don’t seem to serve a purpose, holes can be watered down by having seemingly extra land around them that doesn’t add anything to them. Right off the bat with holes 1 and 2, there’s too much land that doesn’t move the needle and presents a true “less is more situation.” Maybe David McLay Kidd was told from jump that the course was one day meant to host a US Open and I’m an idiot, but excluding that possibility, I really wish there was greater intimacy to the course and its routing.
The biggest thing I wish was different about Dunes is the shaping around many of the greens. There are many holes that display an aesthetic that just looks and feels manufactured to me. The 3rd is a classic example of this where it is a very nice par 5 overall, but I look at the unnatural, wavy looking collection areas around the green and think how much better the hole could be if this was done in a more natural way. Now, there are some greens that present better. The 5th and 14th for example with the bunkering built right into the dunes and gorse are beautiful green sites; however, far more of the greens and the shaping around them just don’t quite capture the links style I understand McLay Kidd to have been going for.
The 11th at Bandon Dunes - another example of unnatural mounding. Photography by: PATRICK KOENIG PHOTOGRAPHY
Par 3’s are essential to a golf course and how people remember them because, well, they are the easiest to remember. While a great 4 or 5 sticks with you, by sheer volume it is easier to recall for years to come what the one shotters look like vs the 2 and 3 shotters. For that reason, If I was ever designing a golf course, I would have a completely antithetical mindset towards the notion that par 3’s are “connector holes” as they are so important to how people think about your golf course. Now, I’m not calling Bandon Dunes’ par 3’s connector holes, but they are weak relative to the other courses on property. I mentioned how 2 seems to have unnecessary expansiveness that doesn’t add much for me. 15, going the other way, has a green and landing area that is so small that it feels out of context for what is often a long iron with a lot of wind blowing. The 6th is good but feels like the same golf hole as the 11th at Pacific Dunes, just a mile down the coast and not as good. And finally, the 12th. This is one of the more photogenic holes as it plays right back to the ocean and while it is my pick of the litter, I still don’t get as excited about this hole as many others on property. I’m not trying to be excessively negative towards Dunes, but the immediate gut check I always give myself on par 3’s is that they should provoke a feeling of opportunity and danger at the same time. You should know you can score with a great shot, but you will likely be punished without doing so which is what makes any single golf shot fun and by this metric the 12th, and all of Dunes’ par 3’s don’t do much for me.
The 12th at Bandon Dunes Photography by: PATRICK KOENIG PHOTOGRAPHY
Ok getting to the competitive set and where I think Dunes should sit. There are a ton of courses that I think should be above Dunes in both rankings systems so I will simply choose the 3 from each that give me the most pause. Starting withGolf.com and its 46th best in the US rating of Bandon Dunes. Coming in at 49th is Valley Club of Montecito. No chance that’s not superior to Bandon as a golf course. Another West Coast course that I feel highly confident saying I prefer to Dunes is Pasatiempo at 58th. When Pasa is dialed, it doesn’t get much better. Finally, one spot ahead of Pasa at 57th is another seaside course, but a better version of one, in Eastward Ho! all the wayacross the country on Cape Cod.
Regarding Golf Digest’s ranking of 40th, the first one that jumps at me (that I have played) is Old Town at 54th. It’s just a more interesting, better golf course in every sense. Next up at 57th, Somerset Hills has so much more charm than Dunes and gets a lot more than 6/10 rounds in the Bandon-Somerset 10 round split from me. Finishing up, Garden City at 64th??? That’s a bigger overall conversation in and of itself as GCGC needs to be way higher than that, but a full 24 spots behind Bandon? No way.
So, where should Bandon Dunes really sit in the rankings? Due to the importance of the resort and Dunes’ incumbency to the overall entity that is Bandon Dunes Resort, I wouldn’t be a proponent of pulling it from the top 100 altogether. It’s top 100, but I think it’s a 76-100 course. Bottom quartile of the top 100, but squarely in it. My reconciliation of that is that a course that is carried overwhelmingly by one thing, be it greens, championship status, topography, or in this case the ocean views, can make the top 100, but in the absence of multiple top tier qualities, bottom quartile is all it should make.
Bandon Dunes Resort is awesome in so many ways and I have loved every day I’ve spent at it and enjoy every single shot on the property. Seriously. But, as always, if we’re going to go through this ranking exercise, then we at least need to try to do it right, and these are my thoughts on how we could do it a bit better regarding Bandon.
Cheers,
HS.