The first stop on my big golf trip of 2023—an 11 day, 14 course tour of Ireland from Dublin, through Northern Ireland, to Donegal—was The Island, about a 30 minute drive northeast of Dublin but only about 15 minutes from my hotel near the Dublin airport. For any golf tour starting in Dublin and working northwest toward the more famous Royal County Down and Royal Portrush, it along with Portmarnock (and perhaps Royal Dublin, which I didn’t see) are the first two noteworthy courses you’ll encounter and, depending on your budget, should play. I’ve heard several times that The Island was one of the most under-appreciated courses across Ireland and Northern Ireland and was even told by one of my German playing partners that it was recently ranked ‘the best’ course in Ireland (not sure by whom). In any case, certainly worth checking out.

And it is. And I probably wouldn’t argue with its inclusion on a top-10 list of courses in Ireland and Northern Ireland. But at best, it should probably be near the bottom of that list. It was certainly among the top 5 courses that I played on my trip (along with Royal County Down, Royal Portrush, St. Patrick’s, and Portmarnock), but most likely at the bottom of that list. And I’m sure I’d have it behind some of the courses in the west that I didn’t play, like Ballybunion and Lahinch.

Ok. So I think the course is very good and maybe great, but not in the highest company. Why? It’s obviously a spectacular site, with the holes winding through huge sand dunes. The routing through these dunes is good and most of the holes are very good from tee to green. But several of the holes are fairly narrow and the grass on the dunes is quite thick. So given the ever-present wind, it’s very difficult unless you’re a top notch ball striker.

And the real issue for me comes at the greens, which are also very difficult. Many are narrow and have steep run-offs at the edges. And it’s this layering of difficult that I find a bit too much; it’s already very difficult from tee to green but then the greens are some of the hardest to hit that I’ve seen, especially given the wind. It’s the same criticism that I have of Greywalls in Michigan—the landscape was always going to give you a very difficult course from tee to green and I think it would have been sensible to make it a bit easier around the greens to bring some balance to the challenge.

But like Greywalls, this is still an excellent course. I like almost all of the individual elements of the course. It’s an interesting driving course and not too severe. The fairway bunkers are not excessive and well-placed where they do occur. And taken independently of the rest of the course, the green complexes are very good. The ample run-offs at their edges are interesting in their own right and there’s a lot of good interior contour. Moreover, there are several very good to excellent holes, including much of the opening and closing stretches. All of that adds up to a very good course and, given that a lot of raters like a difficult course, one that I’m a bit surprised isn’t usually considered in the highest echelons of Irish courses. But maybe most of the raters see things the way I do—this is a case where I’m afraid that the whole is somewhat less than the sum of its parts.


The ~440 yard first (the card is in meters so I’ll give a rough translation) gives a very representative introduction to the course: pretty and interesting, but very tough. There’s ample room off the tee…but only for about the first 250 yards, where the dunes come in on both sides. Unless you’re very confident in your driving, it’d be best to lay back here. But that’ll also leave a very long iron to a green with a narrow opening between some pretty nasty dunes. Definitely one of the least-friendly opening holes that I’ve played.

The second is a par 4 of about 400 yards with a semi-blind drive. It’s a bit hard to tell from the tee but a miss left is much better than one right because there isn’t much rough between this and the third fairway further left. And unlike the first hole, there isn’t too much trouble, so you should feel free to swing away.

And hopefully you did and hit a long drive because the green is even less friendly than the first, perched up and narrow, with steep run-offs on all sides. I get that it’s an easier driving hole and that it makes sense to have a tougher green complex, but unless you’re very precise with your irons, this one is very difficult to hit and hold. Not really the type of green you should build on a links course, where the ground is usually firm and the wind is usually blowing.

Three is a short par 5 over modest terrain, so the architect added a driving challenge in the form of staggered fairway bunkers, the first ~240 out on the right and the second ~280 out on the left. The approach into the green is very interesting, especially if you go for the green in two. The fairway slopes left-to-right and the green is narrow and built up on a ridge on its right side, making for a very awkward third if you miss right. I would say that the design of this green would be almost perfect…except that the dunes encroach too far into the fairway on the left side of the lay-up zone and I’m not sure it’s possible to run one in without your ball kicking well right of the green.

The rest of the front nine has apparently been reworked extensively over the past several years and the short par 3 fourth is a new hole. And it’s a very good one, with excellent shaping on and around the green that does a very good job of blending into its surroundings. But again, you need to be very precise with your tee shot to hit the green in any kind of wind or if the conditions are firm…and you’re pretty much guaranteed to have at least one of those.

I think the fifth played about 380 from our green tees (probably ~6700 yards) just ahead of the first image and from there it just didn’t look wide enough to hit driver (you’d have to from the 470 yard tips). The fairway narrows in the last 175 yards and you run out of room on the left. It’s a good time to try out your stinger 3-wood or long iron because the fairway also slopes forward and you can get quite a bit of roll out.

The green is intimidating even with a short iron, especially this nasty pin on the left. If they ever allow the Republic to host the Open Championship, I’d nominate the Island to host it, even over its more famous neighbor Portmarnock.

We get our first real quirk with the blind drive on the similar length par 4 sixth. While the drive is intimidating, there’s plenty of room past about 220—although that was a problem for us because it was into the wind. But once you clear the crest, the rest of the hole is delightful, with lots of little bumps in the fairway and a green that, for once, is receptive to a good approach. Because it was into the wind for us, it was yet another tough hole. But this wind aside, the hole is a nice foil to the much more challenging opening holes.

Seven, a par 4 of only about 340 yards, is another tough driving hole if you have any kind of ambition, with staggered bunkers at 220 on the right and 240 on the left. The hole turns left around the second bunker and the best placement is close to, but definitely right of it. If you’re short and left of the bunker, you might have a blind second. The green is narrow, angled toward the left side of the fairway, has nasty dunes on the right, and a steep drop-off on the left. So again, very tough but interesting because anything up the right side of the hole leaves you a very shallow angle into the green.

One of the unfortunate—and surprising—things about this first round is that we followed three fourballs of ladies who were playing a club match…and were some of the slowest golfers I’ve ever seen. My experience playing in the UK is that everyone plays quite fast and is very conscientious about holding up those behind them. Not the case with these ladies—it took us over two hours to play the first seven holes.

But after playing the seventh, I had an idea that I was quite proud of. Because the seventh finishes near the clubhouse and the ninth hole returns, we could skip in front of the ladies who were on the eighth and ninth, go straight to the tenth, then come back and play eight and nine at the end. Good move—even though they started before 4 and had over 5 hours of sunlight, the last of the matches couldn’t finish. Starting at 4:20, we managed to finish just before 9.

So I’ll skip ahead in my pictures to the end of our round for the eighth and ninth holes, both ~410 yard par 4s. These are the two newest holes, replacing an (apparently) awkward short par 4 and a par 3. And they both had a bit of a new feel, with flatter fairways. I liked the green site on the eighth, perched above an interesting collection of mounds on the left. But the ninth felt a bit like one of those 90s US suburban public courses, with a flat fairway running between lines of mounds up both sides (obviously these look better).

For the most part, the back nine is on flatter land than the front and the holes are more subdued. The drive on the par 5 tenth is an excellent start and this was probably my favorite driving hole on the course, doglegging right around out-of-bounds with a cluster of bunkers up the left, right where you’d want to bailout. The rest of the shots are a bit tamer although you can see that you really want to make sure that you get your approach all the way to the green.

Eleven is another par 4 of around 420 yards and crosses the tamest ground so far. You can cut the corner up the right (as I accidentally did), but then you’ll have a sketchy lie with an awkward angle into the green. This is another green with some nasty run-offs at the sides but I thought it worked quite well because it’s open in the front and your pitch won’t be too hard if you miss short.

The drive on the 440 yard twelfth is awkward because the hole doglegs left but the fairway slopes right and you lose visibility after about 240 yards. But if you do hit it straight (or even better, with a draw) your ball will bound forward and you can have a shorter iron into this green that sits nicely in the dunes.

Next we come to one of The Island’s most famous holes: a 200+ yard par 3 that’s sort of a version of the famous Calamity at Royal Portrush, with a severe drop off short and right. This would be a hard hole in any conditions but it didn’t help that we had to play it in a rainstorm that lasted almost exactly the amount of time it took us to play this hole.

Without a doubt, the ~350 yard fourteenth is The Island’s strangest hole, with about a 60 foot wide fairway hemmed in by dunes on the left and a marsh on the right. It’s kind of a silly hole but at least it’s all right there in front of you and it’s clear what you have to do—just hit whatever you can hit straight.

The par 5 fifteenth is a lovely hole and maybe the first on the course where you can stand on the tee and breathe a little bit. The left side is well bunkered but there’s plenty of room right and it’d take a drive of well over 300 yards to reach the dune that cuts into the fairway. The approach narrows as you approach the green but there’s little trouble if you lay back to around 100 yards. It’d be nice if there were a few more holes with some width like this to complement so many narrow ones throughout.

Back to the difficulty with the mid-iron par 3 sixteenth. The green is perched on a hill with a false front, front flanking bunkers, and dips and long rough around the edges. Also, you don’t want to be above the hole because the green pitches pretty good from back-to-front.

Although I was a bit exhausted by the long day and tough weather at this point, that wasn’t enough to distract me from seeing that the par 4 seventeenth was probably the best hole on the course. Again, it’s a very tough driving hole, with a massive dune about 230 out on the left and bunkers about 260 on the right. Hidden from view short of the dune is a massive hollow so woe unto anyone who goes left.

But I thought that the green complex—especially given the difficulty of the drive—was the best on the course. It’s innocuous-looking from the fairway but when you approach it, you can see that it’s got all kinds of interesting interior and surrounding contours and that you can use the general slope to feed one in the open side on the left. I suppose that the rough and tumble nature of the property didn’t lend itself to simpler green sites such as this. But I see no reason why greens like the second of fifth couldn’t have been built at-grade as here. More greens like this would have brought some much needed balance to this course.

The long par 4 eighteenth is an appropriate finishing hole, both for this course and in general. Again, it’s a tough drive, although there’s a bit more room here than some of the other holes that cut through the dunes. The approach to the green is a bit simpler than others, without all the excessive contours at the edges.

One of the things I’ve noticed in the past few years is that sometimes, there’s puzzlingly little relationship between course/slope ratings and the actual difficulty of courses. My home course, the University of Maryland, has a slope rating in the 120s and a course rating about one stroke over par—even from the 7,000 yard tips. Yet it’s one of the toughest driving courses that I play because of fairway bunkers, slopes, and the encroachment of trees and the greens are heavily defended by bunkers. I suppose there aren’t a lot of water hazards or OB, but these are hardly the only things that make a course difficult. As a 3ish handicap, I struggle to shoot below the high 70s, which I routinely do on courses with higher course and slope ratings.

This same puzzle arises when you compare The Island to Portmarnock, which I played the next day. Portmarnock was probably a bit shorter from the tees that I played, yet has a course rating about one stroke higher (both par 72) and a slope rating about 10 points higher than the tees I played on The Island. I simply don’t understand how anyone could find Portmarnock, which is relatively flat and doesn’t have much deep rough harder than The Island, which is anything but flat and obviously does have deep rough. I suppose there are a few more fairway bunkers at Portmarnock, but not nearly enough to make it as hard a driving course as this, where you’re guaranteed to be hacking out of the dunes a few times…if you’re lucky enough to find your ball.

I suspect it comes down to the relative prestige of the courses. Portmarnock is probably the Republic’s premier club and has hosted many tournaments, so the raters, working from criteria that are probably quite open to interpretation, give it high marks for difficulty. Still, I don’t know what they’re not seeing on The Island. Perhaps the raters don’t play the courses when they’re rating them? Perhaps they all drive it rifle straight? Because I don’t understand how any normal golfer couldn’t find this to be one of the harder courses they’ve ever played. Maybe that’s reason in itself to hope that The Island continues to build on the reputation that it’s developing—then the raters might start to give it the credit for difficulty that it deserves and the members won’t look like a bunch of sandbaggers when they play away club competitions. I would not want to play a handicap match against anyone who plays their golf here.

​The fourth course at Bandon is Old MacDonald, a collaborative effort between Tom Doak, George Bahto…and Charles Blair MacDonald. Replica holes like the Redan and the Road Hole have come back in fashion in the past few decades and these, of course, were MacDonald’s calling card. His courses were comprised largely of his takes on famous holes from the UK, often with interesting adaptations to fit their sites. Doak, Bahto, and company decided to do a similar thing here with the set of holes that MacDonald often used (plus some additional UK holes that he didn’t), although with perhaps even less concern about replicating the details of original holes. Several of these holes would be better described as ‘inspired by’ the originals rather than replicas of them.
 
I’m not going to spend too much of this review analyzing these holes for how well they capture the originals. I haven’t played most of the originals. And honestly, I couldn’t tell you which hole most of the holes here are replicating (or ‘inspired by’). I’m going to focus on what I see as their merits as golf holes, all that aside.
 
And there are two things that stand out to me about this course. One, the land itself, which reminds me more of British links land than any of the other courses at Bandon in that much of the property is fairly flat but bumpy. Two, the greens, which are huge and heavily contoured. It’s interesting that Doak’s two courses at Bandon are this and Pacific Dunes…because they’re probably the two least-similar courses here. The primary challenge at Pacific Dunes is the narrow greens, which heavily favor certain angles of approach. The green contours are minimal. The opposite is the case here; the green contours are the principle challenge here. The angle of approach is less important, although where you miss relative to the pin is.
 
While I think Old Macdonald’s style stands in starkest contrast with Pacific Dunes, its reputation at Bandon seems to contrast most with Bandon Trails. What I mean by that is that while everyone likes Bandon Trails and consistently rates it as one of the top 2 courses at Bandon, Old MacDonald seems to be very polarizing. Some like it a lot, others (including several of the guys I went with) think it’s the weakest course at Bandon. This doesn’t surprise me because severe greens are always polarizing. I’d probably have it in the bottom half of the Bandon courses (but not last) but there’s a critical caveat: this is probably the most complicated of the Bandon courses and I only played it once. It’s a course that you need to play a few times because there’s a lot going on and you can probably make much more sense of it on repeat plays.
 
 
The first drive is inviting enough…especially when it’s too cold to hit it the roughly 250 yards to reach the right bunker. The most notable thing about this hole, as with pretty much every hole here, is the green, which is the Double Plateau green. The front-right of the green is large and modestly contoured, but there are plateaus on the left and at the back-right. The back-right plateau is very small and apparently they never put the pin there because it runs off on all sides and kills the pace of play. Maybe it wasn’t a great idea to make this the first green.

​I think the par 3 second is Old MacDonald’s take on the Eden hole at St. Andrew’s, with the deep fronting Strath bunker. The green is much deeper than appears from the tee and you don’t want to mess with right pins. You also really don’t want to go long.

​The drive on the short par 4 third is one of the resort’s most famous, blind over a steep ridge with the famous ‘Ghost Tree.’ From the tips, the tree is probably just left of the line to the green and this is probably the ideal line. The fairway slopes heavily to the right but if you hug the left side closely enough with your drive, you can probably get it to bound forward toward the green. 

I hit what I thought was the crappiest slice ever…and still ended up it the fairway with a decent look at the green. There’s probably something to be gained with a good drive here but not much to be lost, unless you hook it into the dunes on the left or hit a bomb way out to the right.

There’s a lot to be lost if you don’t hit a good drive on the almost impossibly-long par 4 fifth (I moved up a set of tees and it’s still 470). There’s a ridge running diagonally from short-left to long-right up the fairway and takes probably 260 to carry it up the right, even from the 470 tees. For most of us, it’s best to aim left and mentally adjust to this playing as a par 5 because the green is fronted by a dip that will carry your ball off to the right and is very hard to hit from long range.

The short par 3 fifth, aptly named ‘short,’ can be either very easy or very hard, depending on what you do from the tee. It’s obvious from the tee what the main issue here is: the green is huge and crazy. But one thing that I really liked about this hole is that it’s easy to tell from the tee where you can and can’t miss it, regardless of where the pin is. For this pin, you obviously don’t want to miss up the slope to the right (which of course I then did). Short is probably fine but a bit long is very good because the slope should bring your ball back toward the hole. It’d be similar if the pin were in the bowl up the hill to the right.

Some people find this green too severe but it doesn’t bother me because it’s transparent and with a little bit of attention and some thinking, you can develop a sensible approach to it. (whether you deliver on that is another matter). But this hole wouldn’t work as well if parts of the green were obscured.

​Naturally following the hole called ‘short’ we should have one called ‘long.’ There are some bunkers up the left side of the fairway but no reason as far as I can tell to challenge them. The bigger issue is a massive bunker fronted by wooden bulkheads that largely cuts off the direct path to the green and which requires you to get within about 100 yards of the green to carry. 

​I believe that the short par 4 seventh is an original. It’s probably the most distinctive hole here. While you can shorten the hole by aiming at the green, the gorse is pretty tight on the left side and you certainly want no part of that. This hole is all about the uphill second shot. Simply put, you must get it up onto the level of the green or you’re screwed.

Eight is Old MacDonald’s take on the Biarritz and it’s a pretty loose interpretation. One of the distinctive things about this Biarritz is that the green slopes front-to-back. This probably makes front pins interesting, but also difficult if the hole is playing downwind.

I’m not really sure what the 415 yard ninth hole is supposed to be but I thought it was a good hole. It’s one of the tougher driving holes, with bunkers up the right and a few more encroaching further out on the left. It’s probably a bit better to be up the left side here to avoid having to come in over the front-right green side bunker. 

​I’m also not sure what the long par 4 tenth is, but I also liked it. The issue is obviously all the bunkers crossing the fairway. You’ll need about 240 from the 440 yard green tees to carry it. Into the wind, it’s probably best to just treat this like a par 5, just like the fourth hole (Or you can cheat and move up to the 380 yard gold tees, like I did).

​The green is also incredibly tough to hit from any kind of distance. To be honest, this green probably works best for a mid to short-iron. I may not have liked this hole as much if I had played it from the tips or the green tees.

​I knew what the eleventh hole was just standing on the tee—it’s the Road Hole. Now obviously this take is quite different from the original because you aren’t driving blind over a wall and a building. But you still don’t want to miss right, which is all bunkers and gorse.
 
Going by the analytics and not taking on the hazards up the right, I played to the left side of the fairway. Clearly it isn’t a good idea to go at the pin here and there appears to be more safe room right then left, so I tried to play to the front-right of the green. Well, I ended up pulling it and going at the far-left corner of the green…which wasn’t too bad a spot. I know that players will intentionally play toward the eighteenth tee when the pin is back-left and I can understand why.
 
I suspect that the best way to play the Road Hole is to completely reject its concept; aim left off the tee then aim long-left on the approach.

​The twelfth hole is supposed to be the Redan and while there doesn’t seem to be full agreement on whether it actually is a Redan, there seems to be close to universal agreement that it isn’t a good hole. The problem is that unless the pin is in the back-left, the green is perched too high above its surroundings and isn’t deep enough for anyone to be able to reasonably hit it. And if you don’t hit it, you can go back-and-forth. Unfortunately, it’s another of the many modern greens that completely overdo the Pinehurst runoff concept. 

Apparently the short par 4 thirteenth is the Leven hole, which I know nothing about. But whether this hole is a close replica or not, it’s a solid hole in its own right. The major feature is the green, which has a huge bowl at its front-right. It’s probably best to play up the left side off the tee so that you’re playing into the opening of the green rather than over the bunkers. But the most important thing is not to miss long-left if the pin is on the right side. It’s probably almost impossible to two putt from there. 

​Fourteen is another short par 4 that I don’t recognize. Like thirteen, it’s an easy driving hole. I don’t think there’s much advantage to being up the left, so it’s best to aim up the right, away from the trouble. The main thing here is that like seven, you must be sure to carry your second up onto the green. 

The par 5 fifteenth is called Westward Ho! and while I have played that course, this hole didn’t remind me of anything there (in part because there’s more than two feet of elevation change). It’s a lovely par 5 in its own right; there’s a lot of room off the tee and you should try to rip it as far as you can. The green is tiered and steeply pitched from back-to-front, so it’s important not to be too far past the hole.

​Sixteen is an Alps/Punchbowl hole and it’s a very good one. If you can, it’s best to be long and up the right side because you might be able to get a view of the green. If you’re up the left side, it’s completely blind (we could have used an aiming post). It’s best to hedge short and left on the approach because the green slopes from back-right to front-left.

​The par 5 seventeenth is a bit of a mess, but not a bad hole. It’s a split fairway, where you can make the longer carry up the right for the more direct line at the green or play out safely to the left. Going up the right would also bring trouble in the form of gorse right of that into play. For most of us, it’s probably best to just go up the left side.

​As we can tell from my second picture below, if you don’t know the hole, it’s possible to play to the wrong green—the green on the right, which I’ve centered in my photo, is actually the second green. The seventeenth green is up the fairway past a bunch of bunkers on the left. I think again here it’s best to just stay far to the left, even though your third will probably be blind. There’s just too much trouble up the right side for any benefit you might get from hitting over there.

​No one seems to think too much of the long par 4 eighteenth hole, with its very fake-looking punchbowl green. But it’s a challenging driving hole and I like the fact that you can run the ball onto the green using the mounds up the left side.

​Overall, I really liked Old MacDonald. It’s different from the three previous Bandon courses and a nice change of pace. It’s much more of a test of the putter than those, more in line with several of Doak’s other courses, which are known for their severe greens. I know that a lot of people don’t like this about Doak’s courses, but I think that the severe greens work well here—they’re large enough and there’s enough room to play coming into them.
 
But one feeling that I had just a few holes in that has remained with me since is that I think they should have built a different type of course here. I mentioned at the outset that this land reminds me much more of classic links land than the other Bandon courses. Most of the property is flat but bumpy. And I think that given this, I would have preferred a course in the mould of the great Open Championship courses, with sod wall bunkers and more modest greens. None of the other courses at Bandon are anything like that and as far as I’m aware, there isn’t really anything in the US like that. It would have been a different way to bring variety to the resort and I think most people would have liked it more.
 
Still, Old MacDonald is the course at Bandon that I’m most interested in playing again on a return trip. I got to play Bandon Dunes and Trails twice each and while I only played Pacific Dunes once, I feel that it was much easier to grasp what’s going on there than it is here. I feel that there’s a lot that I could still learn about this course. I’m looking forward to having the opportunity to come back and find out.

​The third course at Bandon Dunes is Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw’s Bandon Trails. Having arguably two of the three best courses of the modern ‘renaissance’ era (Sand Hills and Friar’s Head), they were an obvious choice for course #3. But apparently is was Mike Keiser more than they who had reservations about offering the third course to them because unlike the Bandon Dunes and Pacific Dunes, the third course would be confined to the forest around the south entrance drive and would only have room for a few holes in the dunes.
 
Apparently this didn’t deter Coore and Crenshaw and when you get into the forested part after playing the first two holes in the dunes, it’s easy to see why: the forest is absolutely gorgeous and the land is incredibly interesting. I find it hard to understand why Mike Keiser would have thought that a course on this land would be anything less than a slam dunk. Perhaps he was concerned that the big hill that separates holes 1-6 and 14-18 from holes 7-13 would make it difficult to create a cohesive routing and/or build a course without a few awkward holes. But these challenges notwithstanding, the property is excellent—hillier than than its coastal siblings, but not just on the side of a hill. There are plenty of interesting larger and smaller scale contours. And while often a drawback on other courses, the trees are among the most beautiful that I’ve seen on any course and never get in the way without reason.
 
Indeed the main controversy about Bandon Trails has become whether it’s actually the best course at the resort. It seems like the architecture purists and low handicappers like it, the purists probably because the land and the architecture are interesting with the latter never trying to outdo the former, and the low handicappers because it’s challenging, but gives you some room to miss around the greens (unlike Pacific Dunes), which themselves aren’t too wild (unlike Old MacDonald).
 
Since I fall in both categories and love a hike through big, beautiful trees, it was probably obvious that I would love this course. But there are a few points that I’d like to highlight at the outset, which I hope to clarify as I discuss the holes. For my liking, this might be the most beautiful course I’ve ever played. The variety of landscapes is outstanding but for me, the character of the forest is truly special. I’ve hiked in a lot of forests in a lot of different places, and this forest is both one of the most beautiful as a backdrop and has the among the best texture, with plants of many different shapes and colors when you look at them up close.
 
And I’m not sure that I seen golf architecture that blends so well with its surroundings. Even in the forested holes, the bunkers seem to disappear into their surroundings and the greens look like they’re sitting on unshaped land. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a course that gets the small details of the shaping so right. Aesthetically, this course is a 10 for me. And as we’ll see, it’s not all just beauty—playing these holes well takes a good deal of thought.
 
 
The first hole here is a bit like the first hole at Sand Valley—a short par 4 where you shouldn’t cause yourself too much trouble if you’re just conservative off the tee. It’s a nice, ample fairway if this happens to be your first shot at the resort (like it was for us). But this green is also much wider than the first at Sand Valley and as long as you hedge toward the front of the green, you shouldn’t have too much trouble here.

​The par 3 second makes up for the lack of trouble at the first and then some if you play the 230 yard back tees. One, it’s incredibly intimidating from the tee. Two, if you’re even with the green and miss wide, you might just want to walk to the next tee. But that’s also the beauty of the hole—if you just hedge short, it’s very playable. You can’t see all of the open space in front of the green, but there’s plenty there. So the smart play from the back tees is to pick a club that gets you near the front of the green, but not past that.
 
Although I made an absolute mess of this hole, it was one of my favorite par 3s at the resort. It’s still a good challenge if you move up a set of tees to 170 yards because you still face the issue of the green getting narrower the deeper you hit into it.

We head into the forest with the par 5 third and it’s pretty clear immediately that the course won’t lose any interest. This image from the tee is absolutely gorgeous and that has nothing to do with my photography skills—the coast lodgepole pines with moss hanging off the branches and the various sized shrubs that dot the landscape…mmm. Actually this course reminded me a lot of pictures I’ve seen of Japan, with its coniferous trees of various heights and shapes. And you can’t give a landscape job a much higher complement than to say it looks Japanese.
 
Anyway, so how about the hole itself? It’s a good one. Bunkers start on the left at about 220 yards and there’s a centerline bunker about 290 from the tips. The left side is a shortcut and might bring the green within reach in two. But there’s much more room to the right (more than appears) and if you have the length to reach this green up the left, you probably have the length to reach it from the right. If you can’t, lay up short of centerline bunkers that start at 90 yards.

​I think that the 400 yard par 4 fourth is one of the best holes that I’ve seen of this length anywhere. You get a clue from the tee what makes it so good; there’s a ridge in the fairway that runs from short-left to long-right, in the direction of the green. This ridge bisects the fairway and if you can carry over it, you’ll have a clear view of the green.
 
But here’s the catch: it’s a much longer carry over the ridge up the right side (probably 270 if you go over the right bunker) than over the small centerline bunker on the left (maybe 220). But if you hedge too far left, your ball can kick forward off the other side of the ridge into fairway bunkers. Even if it doesn’t, the further left you are, the more difficult the shot into the green, which is skinny but deep and angles toward the right side of the fairway. Plus, it slopes from left to right. So this hole really rewards someone who hits a long ball up the right side.
 
As someone who doesn’t, I think it’s still best to play up the right side and take the blind second. It’s easy to run into the bunkers on the left and the tilt of the green makes for a very tough shot, even if you’re in the fairway.

​The 130 yard par 3 fifth was a favorite in my group and that certainly doesn’t suggest any fault in our taste. Obviously, it’s another beautiful hole. But, as is reasonable for a hole of this length, there’s also a lot going on with the green. It’s sort-of a two-tiered biarritz, where the back tier is higher than the front tier. But unlike most biarritzes, there are also a lot of little slopes within each level and at the edges.

​The sixth is another ~400 yard par 4 and is a bit complicated. The fairway is clearly bifurcated into a high right and a low left side. The centerline bunker up the right is about a 250 carry and if you can go right of or carry this, you would think that this would leave you the best approach.
 
And it might most of the time (I didn’t try it), but there’s also a danger: too strong a drive on this line could kick forward into a bunker about 290 out. If playing this line, you probably have to land your ball near the bunker so that it takes the slope left into the center of the fairway. And if you carry the centerline bunker on its left side with some steam, you could run into a blind centerline bunker about 300 out.
 
Or you can just play up the wide left side of the fairway (much wider than it seems), which will leave a more awkward angle for the approach, but one that won’t be too long if you’ve hit a decent drive. I suspect this is the most sensible play for almost everyone.

​The long par 4 seventh is far less complicated. Hugging the big bunker on the right allows both you to avoid carrying the bunker short-left of the green and to play into the primary slope of the ground. Still, I don’t think it’s such an advantage to be here over the middle of the fairway so this is a drive where you can relax. But you’d better hit a solid approach into the green, which has a false front and is two-tiered.

​Along with the second, the 320 par 4 eighth was the primary source of my ‘strokes over par’ in my two round on Bandon Trails. It’s clearly narrower than what we’ve played so far. The smart thing to do here is hit it about 210 yards, which keeps you short of the right bunker. But it’s certainly tempting to go for it and if you’re confident in your driver, it’s probably not a bad play—just don’t pump it into the bushes in the right or snap hook it down the hill on the left.

​The long (~565 yard) par 5 ninth is very beautiful and very interesting, but in a subtle way. The drive is actually pretty simple; the bunker straight ahead is about 330 out, so you probably don’t have to worry about that. Other than needing to avoid a snap hook into the bunker/crap left, it’s one of the least-demanding drives on the course.

Different from just about every other par 5, the most interesting shot here is the layup. There’s a pretty long bunker that starts about 150 yards from the center of the green on the left. On the right, big trees encroach and the space between narrows until you’re about 110 yards from the center. So it makes sense to lay back just short of that, maybe to 125 yards.

​Ten is a par 4 of 420 yards where the strategy is pretty clear from the tee: hug the left fairway bunker and have a fairly open approach into the green, hit to the more ample right side of the fairway and have to come in over the vast right green side bunker. Very simple, very good.

​I absolutely love the long par 4 eleventh although into the wind each time I played it, it was very tough. There’s endless room left off the tee but it’s pretty important to be near the bunkers on the right because you’ll want to shorten the hole. If not into the wind, you might be able to carry them at about 260, but it’s probably always best to hedge a bit left here as you can run down a hill into junk on the right.

​The approach into the green is glorious—this is probably the best-looking pond hole that I’ve ever seen (certainly our many goose-shit-surrounded examples in southeastern Michigan don’t provide much competition). It’s also an interesting approach, straight-forward if you’ve driven it up the right side, but requiring negotiation of a bunker about 30 yards short of the front of the green on the left. You’ll want to hedge away from the pond for the obvious reason that it’s a pond, but also because there’s a subtle left-to-right tilt in the land that can feed your ball onto the green.

​I love a long par 3 that allows you to run the ball onto the green but the twelfth was a bit dull for my tastes. There’s a nice visual illusion with the left bunker—it’s still 60 yards from the front of the green at its closest. Much more relevant is the big mound at the right edge of the green which can cause much trouble for a shot flared right.

The thirteenth—another 400 yard par 4—is an outstanding driving hole. It seems like there’s a lot of room on the right but there isn’t; the trees start at about 240 from the tips and the right side of the fairway slopes toward them. I wouldn’t recommend hitting it over here but I would absolutely recommend ball-hunting here; searching for a playing partner’s ball for a few minutes, I found a half-dozen new Pro-V1s and Taylor Made TP5s.
 
It’s a bit tougher to get yourself to play up the left side because the trees encroach and the bunkers start at about 250. So unless you’re confident in your driving accuracy, it might be best to lay back a bit. The approach is a tough one to an elevated plateau green. Missing short or long is alright, but to either side is not.

​You get your one opportunity here to ride in a cart (actually the back of a trailer) for the 180 yard, 60 foot uphill journey to the fourteenth tee. Not wanting to wait for everyone to pile in, I just walked. Apparently they offer the choice now because someone had a heart attack walking up this hill. If that did it, he probably wasn’t long for this world anyway.
 
If you don’t have a heart attack walking to the fourteenth tee, you might have one trying to play the fourteenth hole, a short par 4 that has attained substantial notoriety. The fairway is wide but the green is very narrow, angled toward the left side of the fairway. What makes this hole so difficult is a drop-off left of the green, which could cause back-and-forth chipping, especially if the flag is in the front. Our flags were in the back both times and I didn’t find the chip from left of the green here too bad.
 
I can see how the hole could cause some frustration, but I didn’t find it to be too tough…even though we had to play it in wind and rain that had materialized out of nowhere.

​Fifteen is another 400ish yard par 4 that should be quite simple; just stay short of the bunker that starts on the right about 100 yards short of the green. And actually, hedging left where the fairway is more open is good because this opens up the angle of the green a bit.

​We start to get a bit more of the dunes-feel again on the par 5 sixteenth, which is probably the course’s easiest driving hole. The bunker on the left is probably 310 out so you can probably let it rip. And if you hit a big slice, the hill on the right side will bring it back toward the middle.

​The bunkers on the right start about 100 yards short of the green but if you think you can reach the green, slopes on the left side will help funnel your ball toward the green. Otherwise it’s a simple lay up and a fairly simple, if uphill and semi-blind, wedge shot. A bit short is ok; don’t miss this green left.

The par 3 seventeenth is Bandon Trails' PR material hole and it’s certainly well-chosen. It’s actually a pretty difficult par 3. It’s only about 170 from the tips but there’s a big ridge and false front at the front of the green and not too much space between the bunkers up on top. It’s one of the most demanding iron shots on the course.

Apparently eighteen is 420 from the tips but we probably played it from about 360. Wherever they put the tees, obviously you don’t want to miss right. There’s a hill in the fairway about 150 yards short of the center of the green and if you clear it, you’ll get a few more yards. A straight-forward, but solid finish.

Given my love of hiking and a good forest, I was predisposed to like Bandon Trails. But the architecture is every bit its match. It’s probably kind of hard for a lot of people to talk about the architecture because it all feels so effortless. Everything blends into the surroundings, the slopes on and around the greens are subtle. But it must have taken extraordinary talent and hard work to make everything seem so effortless. Obviously a golf course is not a natural thing; they had to cut down a lot of trees and rough up the ground to make the slopes on and around the tees and greens playable for golf and to plant grass. That it looks like they didn’t do anything is the ultimate testament to the quality of the work. This is an extraordinary work of landscape architecture.
 
And I’d say the same thing about the strategies of the holes. Nothing jumps out here; there are no super visually dramatic holes with extreme bunkers and slopes (even the fourteenth doesn’t look troubling). But if you look closely, a lot of thought went into each of these holes and a shot played to one part of the fairway will always set you up better than one played to another. I especially appreciate how the contour of the ground generates so much of the interest in many of these holes. The fourth has to be one of the world’s greatest uses of contour as a driving hazard/opportunity, outdoing every hole even at Colt’s St. George’s Hill, a course which is the pinnacle of using contour as a driving challenge.
 
Ultimately discussion of any course at Bandon becomes one of where it falls in the Bandon hierarchy. And for me—and it seems many others including most in my group of eight—Trails is in the top 2 (which is the other is more controversial). I’m not sure that I’d have it ahead of Pacific Dunes because that course has several extraordinary holes, is very cleverly routed on an awkward piece of land, and has outstanding balance in its design. But it’s quite a bit harder than Bandon Trails, especially if you’re not highly accurate with your irons. Irons are the strength of my game, so I liked the challenge and so far would give Pacific Dunes the nod.
 
But I also only played Pacific Dunes once and played well, so if given a few more opportunities, it might give me some of the same frustration that it gives others. It’s not as relaxed a course as this one. So I’ll give the nod to Pacific Dunes for now but note that I’ll have to save the final verdict for a future trip.

As I mentioned in my review of Bandon Dunes, discovering and buying Tom Doak’s yellow Confidential Guide to Golf Courses in 1999 was a transformative event for me. It gave me a new golf course architecture hobby, one that unlike some of my earlier childhood hobbies, remains strong to this day. Although Doak had laid out his principles of design in his earlier book (which I also read) Anatomy of a Golf Course, it was the Confidential Guide which stuck with me because one, it introduced me to so many courses that I hadn’t heard of and two, Doak appeared to be completely uninterested in pulling punches, calling everything as he saw it. Going well beyond golf course architecture, and for better or worse, Doak’s intellectual style has been a major influence on me.

More substantively, Doak preached the gospel of the now ubiquitous ‘minimalism,’ the idea that architects should move a minimal amount earth to construct their courses and that the features of courses should reflect features of the land. Now Doak has said over the years that he isn’t a minimalist strictly speaking and he’s willing to move a large amount of earth if the site has minimal features (like his Rawls Course at Texas Tech). I think it probably makes more sense to call him a ‘naturalist,’ meaning that if the land is interesting, he’s a minimalist and uses the features of the land but if it isn’t, he constructs features but shapes them so that they look natural, with soft slopes and limited shaping outside of the green complexes. This contrasts with the maximalist shaping of courses in the 80s/90s, when architects would build mounds alongside their holes and around their greens.

But by 1999, and certainly in part because of the divisiveness of his writing, Doak hadn’t built any courses that got much more than local attention. That changed when he was given the opportunity to build Pacific Dunes, the follow-up course to Bandon Dunes. This spectacular site gave him the opportunity to put his principles into practice; more natural features than you could know what to do with and all sand, meaning that whatever shaping he did do would drain readily. And of course there were a couple hundred yards of clifftop ocean frontage. Pacific Dunes was Doak’s big break.

And he made the most of it, beginning the development of his reputation as one of the go-to guys if you have a great piece of property. Ever since it opened, the course has been the most highly ranked of the resort’s courses and is a regular in the top 25 on lists of the top 100 golf courses in the world. Now a good part of that is due to its obvious natural advantages—anyone should be able to build some great holes along the ocean and in the mid-sized sand dunes that cover much of the property.

But a big part of what makes this course so good is its unconventional nature. The property isn’t that large, is somewhat awkwardly shaped, and the land is flatter on a pretty good chunk of it (the north side). Doak’s answer to these challenges was to eat up the flatter land with long holes and build several par 3s and shorter par 4s on the more interesting land. This resulted in an unusual mix of holes, with only one par 3 and one par 5 on the front nine but four par 3s and three par 5s on the back.

Two other strengths are the clarity of Doak’s vision and his restraint. Throughout his career, Doak has been criticized for overdoing his greens. But, probably trying not to compete with the site and knowing that it would be windy, Doak toned down his green contours here, building a set of greens which are smaller and narrower than some of his other courses (like Old MacDonald next door), where the emphasis is more on setting up angles and precise iron play. Perhaps more than any other course that I’ve played, it’s important so set up the correct angle into greens here as they heavily favor shots played from the correct places in the fairway over others. Given this focus, to heavily contour these greens would have been to overdo the golf course and make it too difficult. It has a reputation as the most difficult course at the resort—probably because most golfers aren’t too good with their irons—but it’s possible to think your way around this course and through conservative play into the green, leave yourself many realistic chances at par.


Pacific Dunes starts with a pair of short par 4s. The first is definitely not one of the more inviting first holes that I’ve played, but there’s more room to play than appears if you can get it past a row of trees on the left, about 175 yards from the 325 yard standard back tees. With bunkers 230 out on the right, there’s no reason to get aggressive here. Just try to hit something straight, about 200-220 yards.

​The interest picks up with the ~360 yard second. The strategy is clear from the tee; if you carry two bunkers up the left side 220 and 240 from the tee, you’ll have a clear angle straight down the green. If you play out to the right, you’ll have a blind approach. But if you think it’d be a challenge to carry the bunkers, don’t bother. The visibility from the right side of the fairway may not be great, but the green is also very receptive from this angle and if you have decent distance control with your short irons, it’s still a green light shot.

​The northern part of the property, next to Old MacDonald, is the flattest and Doak used it to build four of his longest holes. Three is a par 5 of just under 500 yards. There are two large bunkers in the center of the fairway so you need to pick a side—the more obvious (and wider) right side where you’ll have to keep your drive between the bunkers and gorse and the left side, where you’ll have to keep it between the bunkers and mounds covered with junk. If you think you’ll want to go for the green, the left side is probably better because you can run the ball up the front-left of the green.
 
If you lay up, it’s also best to keep it up the left side and hedge left of the pin on your third—you don’t want any part of the front-right bunkers.

​After a short downhill walk past the snack hut, we come to what’s obviously one of the course’s standout holes: the long, coastline par 4 fourth. If you’re familiar with the place, you’ve probably seen pictures of it in some of the promotional material.
 
While it makes the pictures for its beauty, this is one where the quality of the design matches the setting. The main challenge is fitting your drive between a cluster of bunkers 250 out on the left and the coastline. If you’re short of these, it’ll be tough to reach the green. There’s about a 50 yard gap between the coast and the bunkers and while that should be plenty of room, let’s just say that it’s a bit more intimidating when the hazard on the other side is a cliff and an ocean than when it’s some long grass or a pond. The green complex is also very well-conceived—large and deep, but angled gently from left-to-right to better contain an approach from the right side of the fairway than the left. There are some nasty bunkers short and left of the green, but these shouldn’t be an issue unless you take a swipe at the green from too far out.

To me, this hole exemplifies the strengths of Pacific Dunes that I mentioned at the outset. The setting is obviously spectacular and the design doesn’t try to compete with it. A few bunkers up the left side and a gentle tilt to the putting surface give the advantage to those who play bravely along the coast. This is certainly in the small handful of best holes at the resort.

​At this point, the course turns inland back inland and, we might think, will lose some steam. It doesn’t. While not everyone in my group liked the par 3 fifth, I thought it was excellent. It’s one of the more playable holes on the course as shots played a bit left of the green should funnel back onto it. The green is deep and angles from front-left to back-right, with a narrow section surrounded by trouble at the back. Needless to say, when the pin is here, you should aim for the middle of the green.

 ​One of the holes that I was concerned about before I played Pacific Dunes was the short par 4 sixth, which has a narrow green perched above a bomb crater of a bunker at its left and a deep hollow at its right. I was worried that this would be one of these overly severe green complexes that you see on a lot of newer courses, where a slight miss can result in an impossible shot where you go back-and-forth across the green and make an X.
 
But that shouldn’t be the case here. To start, the drive is easier than I expected, requiring a carry of only about 215 yards over the dune and bunker on the right (but it was downwind for us). And the fairway is wide-open here. If you make the carry, it’s a straight-forward pitch up the hill. The trick here is to hedge short because the front of the green is wider than the back and the slope off the right side of the green becomes progressively steeper the deeper into the green you go. Needless to say, if you couldn’t carry the fairway bunker or ended up in the left side of the fairway for any other reason, you should play very conservatively into this green.

On the other hand, the long par 4 seventh will almost always be very difficult. The one thing going in our favor here is that the drive is to one of the widest fairways on the course and you can swing away without too much worry.
 
And you need a long drive here because the approach is to one of the tightest, most well-defended greens on the course, with bunkers and other junk up the entire left side starting a few dozen yards short of the green and more bunkers and junk short-right. It’s an extremely demanding approach for a longer iron and for most, it probably makes sense to lay 40 or 50 yards back in the fairway. This green site pushes the limits of difficulty for a long par 4 but it’s also the only one like this on the course, which makes it reasonable.

Holes like the mid-length par 4 eighth are what make Pacific Dunes stand out. There’s nothing particularly interesting about either the scenery or the land. There are no dramatic design features. Yet it’s an incredibly interesting hole because of three simple things: the shape of the putting surface, its angle, and the bunker at its front-right.
 
Like seven, the fairway here is wide. But unlike seven, it’s very important that you’re on the correct side of it, which is the left side. You want to get your drive as close to the trees on the left as you can without going in them because the green is skinny, deep, and angles from front-left to back-right. While the green’s skinniness precludes calling any shot into it easy, an approach from near these trees gives you the entire length of the green to play down while one from the right side of the fairway gives you a nasty angle over a bunker into the shallowest aspect of an unreceptive green. Regardless of where you drive it, it’s best to hedge a bit long as the back of the green is wider and more receptive than the front.
 
This hole is minimalism at its finest—not just minimalism in terms of shaping, but minimalism in terms of getting a maximum amount of interest out of a minimum of design elements. It looks innocuous, but there’s as much interest here as any at the resort.

Much busier and not the better for it is the mid-length par 4 ninth. This hole has two greens, high to the right and low to the left. Unfortunately, I only played Pacific Dunes once and only got to see the lower green. There isn’t much to this version of the hole. It’s only about 215 to carry the bunker on the left but it’s also unnecessary. Just hit something out to the right of it and take a slightly longer (but still not too long) iron in.
 
I thought that this was the weakest hole on the course. Maybe it’s better to the upper green?

​Much better is the very photogenic long par 3 tenth. I thought that this was a very good take on a longer (~210 for us) par 3; there’s a good amount of open ground at the front of the green but it narrows as you get deeper into it. There’s all kinds of trouble right if you push it, which I’m sure is quite common here. Maybe not world class, but a very solid long par 3.

​I think most would agree however that the short par 3 eleventh is world class. This is obviously one of the world’s most beautiful holes. I think it’s the hole that shows up the most in the resort’s promotional material.
 
But apart from being obviously beautiful, it’s an interesting hole. Unless you build a big, crazy green, there’s only so much that you can do with a short par 3. A common (and tired) template is the small green completely surrounded by bunkers. While this hole has bunkers tight to the sides, there’s a good amount of room between the bunkers in front and the green. There’s quite a bit of width at the front of the green and you can get away with some inaccuracy here.
 
You can’t, however get away with inaccuracy if playing to the back and if flying it all the way there, you’ll need to be precise. But you can also play to the middle-right of the green and use the slope coming off the right bunker to feed the ball into the back of the green. I’d have to play the hole a few more times to get a sense of how well this works. I hit my shot a bit too far right and it kicked my ball all the way to the left side of the green. I think it should work pretty well if you hit the lower part of the slope.

​If there’s a real breather hole at Pacific Dunes, it’s the 530 yard par 5 twelfth. There’s some gorse about 225 out on the right, but you shouldn’t be that far right. The only real feature here is a bunker in the middle of the fairway about 140 yards from the green. This might be an issue when the hole is playing into the wind in the summer but it wasn’t one for us. Best to hedge a bit right if going for the green in two because the right side is wide open.

​The next famous hole at Pacific Dunes is, not surprisingly, the next one that runs along the coast, a long par 4. This one is much easier off the tee than four, with almost endless room out to the right until past 300 yards. But, following the main theme of the design, the green is skinny and deep, making the angle from the right side of the fairway difficult. Playing to the front of the green is no bargain either as it has one of the course’s highest false fronts.
 
This hole didn’t play too hard downwind (and for some reason, they had moved the tees up), but I imagine that it’d be plenty challenging enough into the wind in the summer. There’s a lot of flexibility in the hole. While the false front and narrowness of the green make it difficult to hit, there’s plenty of room short that you can use if you’re playing it on an into-the-wind day when you’re just hoping to finish it with the same ball.

​Doak turns the screws on us a bit with the short par 3 fourteenth. You absolutely must hit your iron straight here as there is all kinds of trouble to the sides. You certainly want to hit to the front of the green in any kind of challenging conditions and short of the green probably isn’t too bad either, although I didn’t get a good look at it (having hooked my iron into the shit on the left).

​Fifteen covers some of the flattest land on the property and like three and twelve, Doak elected to cover this space with a par 5. Like twelve and to a lesser extent three, it’s a bit of a weak hole. The main feature is the cluster of bunkers right of the fairway, although these start between 280 and 320 out, depending on where they put the back tees. Because the hole was into the wind, they moved the tees way up (our caddie had never seen the back tees so far up), putting these bunkers within range at only about 230.
 
I suspect that this hole was designed to play to play into the wind because there’s plenty of room off the tee and plenty on the approach. You just have to stay left of a bunker in the center of the fairway about 80 yards short of the center of the green. But you should do this anyway because the green angles from front-left to back-right and has a pretty good slope on its right side. I think they made the hole a bit too easy in moving the tees up because it was easy to carry the centerline bunker and get near the green off a decent drive.

One problem with only playing a course once is that if you play a hole poorly, it might be difficult to say much about it. That’s the case with me and the short par 4 sixteenth. I hit my weakest drive of the day under a pine tree on the right side and cursed my way down the rest of the hole.
 
Because the hole is only about 335 from the tips, I should have gone with my instinct and laid back. Looking at my pictures and the aerial, I think that the play here is to place your tee shot in the far left of the fairway, which gives you a look straight down another skinny but deep green. In addition to the shallow angle, playing down the right side means that you’ll have to come over a steep ridge. But there’s also some slope left of the green that should help contain something a bit long from the right side. I’d have to play this hole a few more times to get a good sense of how well these different shots into the green work

Much simpler, but none the worse for it is the long par 3 seventeenth. This is the course’s take on the Redan and there’s plenty of room short and right of the green to run your ball on. But you don’t want to be too short and right; there’s a nasty cluster of bunkers under some pine trees about 50 feet short and right of the green. But unless you hit it in there, the hole shouldn’t be too difficult.

One hole that I think is almost always difficult is the long par 5 eighteenth. They gave us another break with the tees, putting us on the lower right tees that shortened the hole from about 580 to 540 and allowed us to play straight into the fairway rather than into it at an angle. But this also brought the bunkers that cut into the fairway on the left at about 240 into play.
 
The thing to note about this hole is that there isn’t much trouble for the last 150 yards. But there’s all kinds of trouble up to this point and I’d imagine that there are a few golfers who don’t make it to the 150 yard marker. Laying back off the tee would be prudent because anything right is in the bushes, but then it might be difficult to carry your approach into safety on the second. Sometimes a hole is just hard and you need to execute the shots.

​Some people, especially the big data types, question the importance of angles in golf. When you compare scoring into pins placed close to one side of the green, where ostensibly you’d want to be on the opposite side of the fairway to have the more open angle, they find that scoring is actually lower for those who’ve driven it up the same side of the fairway as the pin. Now this isn’t as important a factor for scoring as being in the fairway vs. the rough or certainly avoiding a hazard vs. not, but big data proponents conclude from this that chasing angles is overrated and that we should stick to simpler strategies like staying away from hazards and playing to the fat part of greens.
 
But one of the problems with the big data approach to golf is that it lumps very different types of scenarios together. Not all angles are created equal. If the green is fairly broad and the pin is tucked to one side, the slightly shorter shot from playing up the same side of the fairway as the pin gives a scoring advantage because there’s enough room that the angle doesn’t really make a difference. There’s a big difference between angles on a course with a lot of greens like that and one like Pacific Dunes where the greens are typically deep and narrow, giving you a clear view from one part of the fairway but not from others. I suspect that if we had big data from a sample of courses with greens designed for angles like those here, we’d start to find that angles are pretty important.
 
That’s the thing that stands out to me about Pacific Dunes: it takes a simple—but powerful and interesting—approach to creating strategy in golf holes and applies it to a great piece of property. Because this approach means a lot of narrow greens with challenging hazards at their sides, which will be difficult in the ever-present wind, the other elements that can make a course very difficult, like fairway bunkering and green contours are toned down. More than any of the other ‘new classics’ that I’ve played, Pacific Dunes excels in simplicity: it has a clear, smart design plan, sticks to it, and avoids the excesses of overdone greens and eye candy bunkers. The site was always going to result in a beautiful golf course and, with the weather, a difficult one. No need to compete with or try to enhance that.
 
At the same time, this somewhat formulaic approach might keep Pacific Dunes slightly behind some of its other peer courses that I’ve played—namely Sunningdale Old and Royal St. George’s—in my estimation. Those courses (especially the former) have a few completely original holes that don’t seem to follow any design template. Holes like 11 at Sunningdale Old or 4 at Royal St. George’s are very unusual, but help bring a variety-in-oddness to those courses that I really like and that Pacific Dunes doesn’t try to match. For going through a bunch of large sand dunes, Pacific Dunes is surprisingly not-quirky.
 
I might have worked myself into a bit of a contradiction here, praising the course at the outset for its unconventional mix of holes but then criticizing it (relative to some lofty peers) for lacking variety and quirk. But given the sand dunes and the narrowness of the property, there was probably a real danger of having several bad holes and this unconventional mix of holes probably allowed Doak to avoid this. There’s a fine line between quirkiness and badness and if there’s risk of crossing the line, it may be best to avoid getting too close to it. It’s probably a minor miracle that there’s only one really blind shot on the course (the drive on nine). I might have liked a few more blind shots and some unusual holes, but you have to give Doak a ton of credit for devising a routing that avoided taking on the risk that this would have entailed on such a tight property.
 
This is certainly one of the finest modern courses and, I think, probably the best at the resort.

Perhaps like other people (or not), my life is characterized by a cycle of hobbies. Road construction when I was three or four, lawn sprinklers when I was five, hurricanes when I was ten. My new hobby for my early teenage years was golf course architecture, an interest that was stimulated by a trip to Barnes & Noble probably sometime early in 1999, where I discovered Tom Doak’s Confidential Guide to Golf Courses. I was immediately hooked and the book became one of my main sources of hobby reading over the next few years.

The Confidential Guide was written in the mid-90s and there’s an intriguing bit at the end of the section on the Pacific Northwest where Doak notes a potential project in sand dunes on the southwestern coast of Oregon and says (paraphrasing) that it would be spectacular…if it ever came to fruition. It had been and in fact was opening right around the time that I was first reading those words. And it was indeed a course unlike any that American golfers had seen, at least in their own country. Set on a plane of clifftop sand dunes, it was something of a cross between Pebble Beach and true links golf. While the course perhaps wasn’t as minimal in its shaping as what became the fashion for its younger siblings and now in the last decade, most new courses, it was also much more naturalistic than almost every course build in the mounding-crazed 80s and 90s.

Still, it wouldn’t be until a few years later, after Pacific Dunes opened and was immediately proclaimed one of the 20 or 30 best courses in the world (a place it still holds in most rankings) that Bandon Dunes really drew my attention. Then they kept adding courses and my desire to go only increased. But finally, about 20 years and a few false starts later, I got to Bandon Dunes in Fall 2022. The success of Bandon led Mike Keiser and associates to develop several similar (and similarly successful) destination resorts, including Sand Valley and Cabot, both of which I saw before I made it to Bandon. But seeing these only increased my desire to see the original.


It’s tough to pick an order in which to write about the Bandon courses. Sensible ideas would be to write about them in the order that I played them or to write about them in the order that I’d rank them, starting with my favorite or least favorite. I’ve decided to write about them in the order that they opened, which also mixes them up nicely as far as my personal rankings. The original course seems—surprisingly to me—to be a bit divisive, with some (including several in my group) thinking that it’s the best course at the resort and easily top 100 in the world and some thinking it’s the weakest and not close to the top 100. For me, it falls in the middle; I preferred Pacific Dunes and Bandon Trails, but I’d probably place it ahead of Old MacDonald and definitely place it ahead of the Sheep Ranch.

Why is Bandon Dunes divisive? Like I said, I have a bit of a hard time understanding this because there are so many strengths. My sense is that it’s the golf architecture purists who are most critical of Bandon Dunes because it still has some of the vestiges of 80s/90s architecture. Three things that I’ve heard are (1) the occasional awkwardness of the routing; (2) the shaping has a bit of the 80s/90s look, with mounding and sharp cuts around several of the greens; (3) that many of these people haven’t seen it in a few years, when there was both a lot more gorse and a lot more rough around the greens, which accentuated the 80s/90s feel of the shaping.

Seeing pictures of the course over the years, it looks like one of the biggest changes at Bandon Dunes has been shaving the areas surrounding all of the greens to fairway height. For the first few years, it looked like the greens were surrounded by rough. Although I never played that version, I could see how this would greatly detract from the course. Because while I agree that some of the shaping around the greens looks a bit manufactured, these green surroundings still play well because they’re all short grass and a miss runs away from the green, leaving interesting, but often difficult pitches. Were the greens surrounded by rough, the course would lose much of its short game interest and a good share of its links feel, which are two of its major strengths.

So I agree with some of what I take to be the criticisms of the critics, although I suspect that the course has also improved substantially over the years and that anyone who hasn’t seen it in awhile might need to give it another look. Bandon Dunes has a few weaknesses, a few more than Pacific Dunes and Bandon Trails. But it has so many strengths. The famous stretch of 4-6 is excellent. So is the back nine, which is certainly in the running for the best nine at the resort.  There are great holes throughout, which I discussed extensively on Golf Club Atlas in a thread on whether Bandon Dunes is overrated (I argued that it isn’t).


Another thing that people point to as a weakness is the opening stretch, which works its way around a ridge at the inland edge of the property. While I don’t think that the mid-length par 4 first is going to be on anyone’s list of great holes here or anywhere else, I found it a perfectly good starting hole. There’s plenty of room off the tee but if you get too aggressive, you can run through the fairway into a bunker. It’s a pretty good climb up to the green but the green is plenty deep and there’s no excuse (save a general lack of golfing ability) for not getting your approach up there and getting away with at least a par.

The par three second has alternate tees; a south tee next to the first green that plays into the deepest aspect of the green and a west tee that requires about a 150 yard walk from the first green and plays into the green’s shallow aspect. Unfortunately we played it both times from the west tee. From here, it might be the weakest hole on the course because of the clunk that it introduces into the routing and because it’s pretty one note—you either get the ball up onto the shallow shelf of the green or it comes back down. I’d have liked to have had the opportunity to play from the south tee, which I strongly suspect makes it a better hole.

I can understand not liking the first two holes but the par 5 third, coming down off the ridge and playing toward the ocean, is solid by any standard. The bunkers on the right are 250-290 out depending on the tees, but there’s plenty of room left, more than you can see. Of course if you do that, you’re further away from the green, which should be reachable for a decent length hitter who places their drive up the right. It’s a solid hole, if not a world-beater.

But each of the next three holes makes a good case as one. The long par fourth has one of the resort’s iconic approach shots as it doglegs right around sand dunes, revealing the ocean for the first time on the approach. I found this to be a bit of an awkward drive because one, the visibility of the fairway from the tee isn’t great and two, while the fairway runs fairly straight in the landing area, the dunes gradually encroach on the right. The latter makes it interesting because the green is well-bunkered at its front-left and you want to approach from the right side of the fairway. It also makes it interesting for anyone who hits a fade because the further you try to drive it, the greater chance that you run out of room on the right.

One hole that I’d never been sure about in all the pictures that I’d seen of Bandon Dunes was the long par 4 fifth. Running along the coast, it’s obviously one of the most photogenic holes anywhere. But with several dunes in the center of the fairway, and what looked like an unrealistically narrow landing area left of them, I wondered if this hole wasn’t a bit of a beautiful mess.

Perhaps there have been a few changes to soften it over the years but not only is the current hole not a mess, it’s absolutely on the short list of best holes at the whole resort. The centerline dunes actually work very well. The first few are a short carry and there’s plenty of room to play to the right of them. Depending on your tees, it’ll be a decent carry to get over all of them but if you do, you’re rewarded with a massively wide fairway.

But there’s one more catch that I didn’t realize; the fairway narrows at about the 270-300 range (closer on the left, further on the right) and if the hole’s playing downwind, you need to be careful not to run through the fairway. So there’s something for everyone off this tee and regardless of your ability, there are several ways that you can play the drive.

The approach, through a narrow gap in the dunes to a skinny but deep green, is also one of the course’s best. But for me it’s the drive—which I came in questioning whether it would be any good and left thinking that it was one of the resort’s best—that makes this a great hole.

Another hole that I came in questioning that turned out great is the par 3 sixth. This hole has always featured in the resort’s promotional material but these pictures made it seem less appealing than it should to me; they showed a green surrounded by artificial-looking shaping and rough.

I don’t know if the shaping has been softened but the rough is certainly gone and the current version of the hole is excellent. The hole seems to follow a classic principle—there’s more room at the front than the back and there’s a little more safety if you hedge short. There’s plenty of safety (although not necessarily easy shots) short of the green but serious trouble long and long-right.

Perhaps the most criticized aspect of Bandon Dunes is the walk from the sixth to the seventh tee. Basically, you have to walk all the way back to the fifth green for the seventh tee. Apparently this is due to the late addition of the piece of land on which the sixth sits to the resort.

But really, you have to be a pretty big routing curmudgeon to be bothered by this. If you play the great links courses in the UK, you have walks like this all the time because they keep building new back tees and unless you’re playing the course at the original 6,000 yards, almost every hole has a 120 yard walkback to the newer tees. The front nine at Bandon does have a few more of these walks than there should be (1-2, 3-4, 6-7). But none is more than about 150 yards. If you’re chatting with others in your group, you won’t even notice that the walk was longer than usual.

And actually, I have more of an issue with the seventh hole itself than the walk to the seventh tee. It’s not a bad hole at all but (1) there’s nothing going on with the drive and (2) the green complex is the height of the course’s 80s/90s-style shaping. It’s heart-shaped with a mound right behind the center of the green, making it difficult to putt from one side of the green to the other. I felt that this green was Bandon Dunes at its most Jerry Matthews.

Unfortunately my picture from the eighth tee does a better job showing my playing partners than the eighth drive (not that they’re its inferiors…). It’s not too difficult a drive; all you have to do is keep your drive under 250, which keeps you short of the main centerline bunker. You can go further if you drive it left of the bunker but the angle to most pins should be better from the right side.

Along with two and seven, I think that the par 5 ninth is a weakness. There’s a cluster of bunkers right in the middle of the hole in the driving zone. Now these are pretty difficult to avoid if you’re trying to play the hole correctly down the middle of the fairway. But the hole doglegs right around mounds that aren’t covered in anything other than short rough and I think the best way to play it is to just play up the rough on the right side.

So it doesn’t work great from a playing perspective. It works even less well from an aesthetic one as both sides of the hole are lined with mounds, which also surround the sides and back of the green. While the seventh green looked like a Bandon Dunes hole with a Jerry Matthews green, the last 200 yards of this hole look like a metro Detroit public course.

Despite the terrible weather in which we played it, I thought that the short par 4 tenth was outstanding. The bunkers in front of the tee are only about a 190 yard carry and there’s endless room right of them. But you really don’t want to drive it over there because more than almost any hole that I’ve seen, the angle into the green is critical here. The green is deep but skinny, with the deepest aspect angling toward the far left side of the fairway. There’s also a dune ridge running along the right side of the green that obscures it completely from the right side of the fairway.

​My pictures show how not to play the hole because I pushed my drive way right and had to come into the green at its shallowest angle over the ridge. Still, good shots go a long way in making up for bad shots and/or bad strategy and after a good 9-iron, my worst drive of the day led to my first birdie.

Eleven follows a theme that we first saw on ten and will see a few more times on the back nine: if you play a sensible, conservative shot from the tee, it isn’t that hard. This hole is only about 385 yards from the standard back tee and there are three bunkers up the left side of the fairway, the main one at 240. Now you could challenge this and potentially have a very short shot into the green. But you should just play out to the right and hit a short iron on. The angle may be a bit worse, but the shot is short enough that for a decent player, this shouldn’t matter.

There’s no way to get around the difficulty of the long par 3 twelfth. The green curves around a bunker at its front-left and there’s no pin where there’s much comfort in a miss wide. The back-right of the green has the most space, but trying to hit there brings the danger of running down the hill into the junk behind the green. The safe thing to do here is hedge to the front-middle of the green.

The only exception to this might be if the pin is in the back-left. I wonder if missing aiming at the open area left of the green (where the guy in the grey sweater is) might be best for these pins? Hopefully I can give that a try on some future trip.

There’ nothing too strategically interesting or difficult about the par 5 thirteenth, but it has the wildest fairway on the course (maybe at the resort) and I like it for that. There’s more room left off the tee than you think and if I had one comment about strategy, it’d be to hedge left on either a layup or a shot that goes for the green. That’ll remove some concern about having to play over the dip at the front-right of the green, which can cause trouble if you’re playing to front pins from the right side of the fairway.

Like ten, fourteen is a short par 4 where many will be tempted to go for the green up the right. After all, they were flying it up on the green in the US Amateur.

Well, you’re not playing in the US Amateur. A drive up the right here is one of the biggest sucker plays that I’ve seen on a golf course. Because there are bunkers absolutely everywhere. Now you can avoid all of that if you can carry it 270. But far fewer people can do that than think they can do it.
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What you should do here is hit a driver or three-wood over the first bunker on the left (about a 210 carry). It’s wide-open out there and you’ll have a clear look straight into the deepest aspect of the green. This hole should be pretty easy but I’m sure that egos cause quite a few big numbers.

The par 3 fifteenth caused the players all kinds of trouble in the 2020 US Amateur as they got aggressive and went over the back of the green. Of all the places around all of the greens at Bandon Dunes, long, long-left, and long-right here are among the worst. It’s entirely possible to go back and forth and make an X if you hit your first shot into one of these places.

But the solution seemed so simple to me: hedge to the front-left of the green. While the front-right bunker is obviously not great, there’s plenty of room at the front-left. While the hole was playing downwind for us, my understanding is that it plays into the wind in the summer, which should also help hold the ball here.

Now I understand that planning in golf is often in vain because most of us aren’t consistent enough to follow a plan with much certainty. We often end up hitting it exactly where we aren’t trying to. But it’s not hard to pick one club less. And it’s not hard to aim left of the pin. This is one hole where I think with the right plans, you can lessen your chance of a disaster. And to me, that makes it an excellent one.

The short par 4 sixteenth was another baffling hole in the US Amateur. It was downwind and drivable for almost all of the players, yet there really isn’t enough room to land and hold the ball near the green. But the layup out to the left also left a tricky shot into the shallower aspect of the green and NBC commentator Justin Leonard argued for driving it long and left near the seventeenth tee. It’s probably not how the hole was meant to be played and leaves an awkward pitch, but there’s plenty of room over there and I can see the sense of it.

Of course that’s all irrelevant for 99% of the rest of us…especially when the hole is playing into the wind as it was for us. The ~220 yard carry over the right side of the bunker wasn’t even possible from the regular back tees so it was a matter of picking the correct line out to the left. And I think that the best play here is well out to the left, just short of the rough-covered mound in the distance. That mound is about 260 yards out, so you should be able to manage to carry the first bunker (~210) and stay short of it. It’s true that the angle into the green from here is worse than from closer to the centerline bunkers on the more direct route to the green but to me, there isn’t enough room up the right side to justify going for the better angle. The green is still plenty big enough even from the poor angle out to the left. This is a hole where the reward for the heroic shot doesn’t justify the risk.

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The last two holes turn down the temperature a bit. The drive on seventeen should be pretty simple: try to hit it about 250 yards and absolutely do not hit it more than 270. That’s because there’s a canyon on the right and a cluster of bunkers up the left pinching the fairway at this distance. The approach is to the deepest and (I’m pretty sure) largest green on the course. Depending on the pin, you could have anywhere between a wedge and a hybrid. Whatever you have, make sure that you’re reasonably precise with the distance because the green is also the course’s most undulating.

Different from the rest of the course, it’s the green that makes this hole. But if anything, the variety is a point in its favor.

No one will mistake the eighteenth hole for a great finish and the mounding around the layup zone on the left gets a bit reminiscent of the ninth hole, but it’s not a bad finish. Not worthy of the rest of the back nine, but I liked it more than the weakest holes on the front.

As I said at the outset, Bandon Dunes probably falls in the middle of the pack for me at the resort. There are a few things that I don’t like, but also several undeniably great holes. One thing that stands out to me about this course is that it exploits the golfer’s ego better than almost any other that I’ve seen. On several holes, there’s a conservative drive that leaves you a very playable approach. But there’s also a hero drive that most won’t pull off, but will still try. That’s especially true because Bandon is a special trip for most, one that they’ve either been waiting to do for a long time or don’t get to do very often. They didn’t come all this way to lay up. And I think that this course exploits that more than the others at the resort.

For me, a tougher issue than comparing Bandon Dunes to the other courses at the resort is how it stacks up compared to some of the other recent Keiser offerings that I've played: the Sand Valley and Cabot courses. Of those four, it’s probably most similar to Cabot Links. They’re both relatively flat and play more like traditional links courses than the Sand Valley courses or Cabot Cliffs. And between those two, I think I slightly prefer Cabot Links. As I noted in my review, Cabot Links has some of the best subtle shaping around its greens that I’ve seen on any course. There’s a bit more variety in the terrain and scenery, the two nines are of more equal strength, and the finish is certainly stronger. Maybe the highs aren’t quite as high, but Cabot Links is more consistent.

As an overall course, Cabot Cliffs reminds me a bit of Bandon Dunes because it also has many great holes and a few weaknesses in both the routing and the individual holes. But Cabot Cliffs also has more dramatic terrain and spectacular scenery than Bandon Dunes. And its great holes, like 16 and 17, are more unique than anything at Bandon Dunes because the wild terrain and the jagged cliff edges afforded opportunities that weren’t available here.

I think that the Sand Valley courses also have a terrain advantage over Bandon Dunes. They remind me more of Bandon Trails, being hilly treks through the woods (but with a lot more open sand). Neither Sand Valley nor Mammoth Dunes have the routing or shaping issues that Bandon occasionally has. But both—and especially Mammoth Dunes—suffer from a lack of editing. Each has at least a few holes where there’s too much going on; excessive width, too many bunkers, over-contoured green complexes, etc.. For its faults, Bandon never feels over done. It’s very tightly designed. That might give the nod to Bandon for me because I give a design points for parsimony. But it’s a tough call, especially with Sand Valley, because the terrain there is better and it also has a handful of world class holes.

This all just goes to show how difficult it is to compare excellent golf courses to each other. There are a lot of different aspects of a course to compare (routing, terrain, greens, design parsimony, etc.), everyone likes different things within each category, and they differ in the weight that they place on each category. But it’s clear to me at least that Bandon Dunes, if not superior to some of the other recent Keiser courses, at least compares favorably to them. And because they all tend to fall in a similar places in the rankings (except Sand Valley, which I think is becoming underrated), near the bottom of the world top 100, I’d continue to defend the position that Bandon Dunes isn’t overrated.

The golf world’s attention was drawn to the west coast of Nova Scotia’s Cape Breton Island a few years back when word spread about the development of a second course. There were two good reasons for this. The first was that it would be designed by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, who’ve given us some of the world’s best new courses in the last 30 years. The second (and probably the reason for the first) is that people saw pictures of the absolutely spectacular dunes-and-cliffs site. Not only was there the potential for holes that could rival the cliffside holes at Cypress Point, the site also afforded the opportunity to create some stunning and unique inland holes.

While the cliffside holes are extraordinary as advertised (I’ll say plenty about the now-famous 16th and 17th), the variety of landscapes on this property is an incredible strength and the routing takes advantage of it. There’s a long stretch of coastline and the routing returns to it at several points. There’s also a section of the property with sand dunes next to an inland lake, which we play through twice. The rest of the property is a hilly transition area between the dunes and the forest through which the course weaves in and out. The routing changes direction on almost every hole, which keeps you on your toes, but also prevents you from experiencing the multi-hole beatdown into the wind that you often experience on out-and-back-routed links courses.

So the landscape offers incredible variety and the routing takes advantage of it. The design features one additional element that adds to the variety: an unusual mix of 6 par 3s, 6 par 4s, and 6 par 5s. I’m a bit less convinced about the merits of this. I suppose that par doesn’t really matter and regardless of the wind, a few of these par 5s will play like long (or not even that long) par 4s. Still, I think that the course could use two or three more strong par 4s and stretches of consecutive par 4s that differ from each other. The only consecutive par 4s here are holes two and three.

While the greens contours are similar to those next door in that they’re interesting but not over-the-top, the green surroundings here are quite a bit more challenging. There are several steep run-offs around these greens and in a good wind—which I experienced in both rounds I played and would imagine is quite common—they can be very difficult to hit. And missing can lead to some serious trouble. I suppose that the green complexes here were likely to end up a bit more severe than next door simply because the land is a lot hillier and many green sites needed to be built into heavily sloped areas. Still, I think that a few of the green complexes here could have been toned down a bit, given both the wind and the firmness of the course in the summer.


As on a lot of spectacular courses, the first hole isn’t too spectacular. From the back tees, it’s a very long 580 yard par 5, especially when playing right into the wind. There isn’t too much trouble between the tee and the green, save for one fairway bunker encroaching into the left side of the fairway about 110 yards short of the green and another about 25 yards short.

Continuing southwest into the wind is the stunning 390 yard par 4 second. This gets many people’s nod as the best hole at Cabot Cliffs and for good reason: it’s a unique hole both in its setting and how the hole is shaped into it. We play downhill into a very wide and fairly flat sandy coastal plain. The approach is over a creek that flows out to the sea up into the sand dunes. The green, which is fronted by bunkers carved into a sand dune, is sort-of triangle-shaped, with a wide, lower portion at the front and a narrower, high one at the back.

Now there are options off the tee here which are dictated by the hole location. The left side of the green is blind from all but the left side of the fairway. And the right side of the green is blind from all but the right. So you want to be on the same side of the fairway as the pin, which you can see from the tee, maybe with the assistance of your range finder…unless you are or have the vision of a pilot. While it’s not too hard to place your drive in the middle of this fairway, you have to negotiate the junk along the left or right edge of the fairway to get it into the optimal spot. The wind was blowing a bit too hard for me to be confident enough to try this and I was just happy to hit the fairway.

But it’s a very interesting concept and I think it works well. Wherever you drive it, make sure that you carry your approach up onto the green; if you miss the left side short, you can roll all the way back down into the junk. I suspect that this hole wouldn’t be so hard without wind, but I’m not sure how many are lucky enough to experience that.

The similar length third features a bunker in the middle of the fairway right where you’d want to drive the ball. But it’s probably worth challenging because the green is perched up and a hill with a pretty steep fall-off to the right. You want to make sure that you have a manageable length for your second.

The par 3 fourth has two greens; one on the left that plays over 200 yards and one on the right that plays about 150. The shorter one is clearly the most dangerous. While there’s ample room (even if you can’t see it) short and right of the first green, you must be super-accurate if playing to the second or there’s a decent chance that you’ll go back-and-forth across the green with the next few. There’s more room at the back than the front but you still need a high degree of accuracy. While it isn’t the most exciting hole, I prefer the left green.

While the second is a bit of a subtly great driving hole, the short par 4 fifth is an obviously great one. The scorecard lists it at 330 yards…but that’s aiming at the green and you need about a 300 carry to make that work.

The rest of us get to pick our comfort level with a diagonal carry up to the right and the hole plays more like 360-390 depending on which line we choose.. I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen such a cape style drive where the shot varies so much depending on which line you pick. There’s open fairway well out to the right, but you can probably only go about 200 yards on this line unless you hit a good hook. Then there’s a more uphill carry of about 210 yards over a bunker which in a left-to-right wind is probably the most sensible for most of us. This line would be dangerous for a long hitter because the fairway runs out at about 250-265. They’ll need to go somewhere to the left (it’s about 265 over the bunker short and right of the green), but the fairway is very shallow on the other side.

While the green is large and not particularly interesting, the drive is one of the best that I’ve seen anywhere. I’m fortunate in that the line over the first bunker is just the right carry for me because there isn’t a lot of room for a long hitter to play left of that, unless they can go for the green. Still, they could always lay up to the right and as usual, that’d probably be best for the scorecard…if less fun.

The fifth green also brings us into the sand dunes where we find the entire par 3 sixth. This is a fantastic short hole which looks more punishing than it is, but also ends up being a bit harder than you think it should be once you see what's going on. That’s because the green is large and there’s plenty of room to miss short (you might even be able to putt from the front tees), but it also slopes away and it’s difficult to get it close, unless the pin is in the bowl at the back-right.

We play back away from the ocean into the endless Canadian wilderness on the par 5 seventh. But this is another very good driving hole, where you can get in range with a bold carry up the right side…or run out of space and into the junk up the left. There’s not a lot to say about the rest of the hole but make sure that you carry your approach far enough.

The next two holes, another par 5 and a par 3 are a bit of a weak point. Eight is a solid driving hole where you can get close to the green in two if you pick a bold line off the tee but again, the rest of the shots aren’t that interesting. Then we have an awkward walk of about 150 yards up around the first green and the second tee to a downhill par 3 that plays all of 120 yards. It’s a pet peeve of mine to have a walk from a green to a tee that’s longer than that next hole and this one, while similar in concept, is inferior to the fourteenth hole next door. But at least it’s just as beautiful.

The next hole, a long par 5 with the ocean all the way down the left, was one of my favorites despite two incredibly disappointing attempts at playing it. First of all, I just love the look of the short grass along the edge of the cliff. But for most of the landing area, there are bunkers ‘protecting’ you from running over the cliff. More of an issue for me was a cluster of bunkers about 280 down the right side. This hole is downwind with the prevailing wind and it’s a challenge to fit one between the cliff right and the bunker cluster left.

It’s quite possible to go for the green if you hit a good one because it can roll out forever—one of my playing partners’ drives went about 400 yards. But if you’re laying up, you must be careful to stay well short of the inlet about 60 yards short of the green. It’s all downhill and downwind, so you need to lay back further than you think.

The par 4 eleventh takes us back uphill and inland, past the new vacation homes of Sydney Crosby and other Canadian elites. It’s pretty easy to tell what you should do here—hug the bunker right because the hilltop green opens up on that side. It’s best to err short here because you want no part of what’s over the green.

While the 200+ yard (up to 245) looks straight-forward enough, I found it baffling to play. You can’t really run one onto the green here because the land slopes away to the left. And there was almost no way to land one on the green and hold it there given the wind direction (down) and the firm ground. I’d be interested to try to play some shots around the right side of the bunker, but in addition to there not being much room to do this, it didn’t look like there was enough tilt toward the green. But then again, I suppose short and left isn’t too bad.

Thirteen is a bit of a breather hole with plenty of width and a much more receptive green, if you carry the rise in front of it.

Fourteen is a simple-looking ~160 yard par 3…but it didn’t play simple. The issue here again was that the green was so firm that it was difficult to carry on and hold it there.

The four hole run home immediately became famous when the course opened and for good reason. The par 5 fifteenth is a thrill. The main feature is a bunker in the middle of the fairway, which requires about a 260 carry from the tips. I suppose that you’re offered a good view of the green if you keep your drive in the area left of it…but none of us was bold enough to try to hit it there.

Carry it or miss it a bit right and your ball will run well down the fairway (at least with the standard down wind), possibly to a career long drive. From here you’ll have a blind shot that asks only one question: can you carry a centerline bunker 50 yards short of the center of the green? If yes, pick a club that can just carry that and go for it. If not, lay well back. You probably can’t hold the green with your second, but the bunkers behind the green aren’t too bad.

The par 3 sixteenth is just extraordinary. If you’re trying to keep a score together—which I was in my second round—it’s one of the most terrifying shots that you’ll ever see. But it was, to this point, the single most spectacular.

There’s some room to bail out short and left, but it’ll be very difficult to keep your pitch on the upper left side of the green from here. If the flag is on the precipice at the right side of the green, your score would probably be better off if you played over here and pitched on, although I could understand why no one would ever do that. You didn’t come all this way and pay all this money not to try that shot.

The only shot that I’ve ever seen that might outdo the tee shot on sixteen is the tee shot from the tips on seventeen. I can hardly imagine a more difficult-looking shot, uphill and over a massive cliff, with no view of the landing area. I moved up a set of tees from where I could at least see a little of the fairway.

If you’re a long hitter, the best way to play the hole is to bomb one along the cliff. While into the wind, it’s only between a 200 and 240 yard carry depending on the line and if you carry even part of the cliff, your ball will likely bound forward near the green. For those of us who don’t hit a long ball and are too scared to try this shot, there’s plenty of room out to the left (and, helpfully, a spotter).

But unless the pin is in the back of the green, the approach off a layup is very tough, unless you can put a lot of spin on the ball, your wedge approach will roll out to the back of the green. Alternatively, you can get clever and play a bump-and-run around the bunker on the left—the land here is contoured to feed the ball onto the green. If you pull it off just right, I think you can keep it on the front of the green. But it’d take some experimentation to make that work. Just hit one up on the green, make your 4, and go to the next tee.

It’s a puzzling hole if you layup but I think that’s because it’s meant to heavily favor those who go for the green and pull it off. Given the shot required to do that, I have no problem with it. This is one of the greatest short par 4s that I've seen.

The par 5 eighteenth is a bit of a mirror image of the tenth, but of course plays much longer because it’s into the wind. Like ten, you need to fit one between bunkers and ocean—a fade off the left bunkers would work great.

​The approach is similar too except this time, you need to be able to carry within about 90 yards of the center of the green to carry the cove. Otherwise you might want to play out to the left because you’ll be a long way back if you lay up short. It’s always best to err a bit short here because the green narrows its back.

I mentioned in my review of Cabot Links that the starter there told me that people’s preferences split about 50/50 between Cabot Links and Cabot Cliffs. That was before I had played Cabot Cliffs and I was surprised because Cabot Cliffs looked much more spectacular. And it is. But after playing it, I think I can understand why many prefer Cabot Links. Unless the wind is down, this is a much harder course than Cabot Links. There are more opportunities for lost balls and the green complexes are more difficult.

It was also windier here both days than at Cabot Links. Now we played both morning rounds there and both afternoon rounds here and I can’t rule out that it just got more windy in the afternoon. But much of Cabot Cliffs is more than 75 feet above sea level while Cabot Links is just 15-30 feet above and I suspect that it’s usually more windy here. Cabot Cliffs is plenty wide enough to handle the wind but the combination of the wind and the steeper slopes throughout the course make it much more difficult to control the ball here. Still, the course record is much lower here than at Cabot Links (60 here vs. I think 65 or 66 for Cabot Links) so the course isn’t always more difficult.

As far as judging the courses, it would come down to how you weigh the importance of the spectacular vs. the subtle. This property afforded Coore and Crenshaw some spectacular opportunities and there’s no doubt that they took advantage of them. Cabot Links simply has nothing to compare to the sixteenth or seventeenth holes. I'm not sure that any architects could have done a better job with the extraordinary moments on the property than Coore and Crenshaw did.

But there’s not a lot like the little humps and bumps that you find around the greens at Cabot Links. I loved the shaping on and especially around the greens at Cabot Links and am always especially impressed when architects are able to create something really interesting on modest land. So I think I give the nod to Cabot Links. But I'm also not sure that you could have done that here--this property is quite hilly while Cabot Links is mostly gently rolling or flat. There were always going to have to be some pretty big slopes around these greens. I suppose the challenge here was the opposite; yes you can build a lot of spectacular-looking holes, but can you keep them from being too severe?

I think that Coore and Crenshaw succeeded in building a course that isn't too severe and you have to give them a lot of credit for that. I can think of a few highly regarded living architects who may have let things get a bit out of control on this property. The merit of something is not determined just by what it does and does well, but what it doesn’t do and could have done badly. Being a perfect 10 for beauty doesn't hurt either.

While everyone on the Golf Channel constantly talks of growing the game, my feeling since a few months after the beginning of Covid has been that the game has grown too much. Whereas for the previous 10-15 years, you could call your favorite local course on Friday afternoon and book a prime Saturday morning tee time, now you have to get your plans together and make the reservation a week in advance. I guess the growth of the game is good for the equipment makers and the course operators, but it hasn’t been great for those of us who had been benefitting from its slow decline.
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Nowhere has the new, over-popularity of golf struck me more than when I tried to book a reservation at Cabot in January 2022 for July 2022. While I figured that it wouldn’t be possible to book a large reservation only six months in advance, I was only making the reservation for two, my Michigan golf buddy Bob and me. Now you have to book lodging to book golf more than a few weeks in advance and all they had for the two of us was one Saturday night in the entire month of July. Fortunately Bob and I were flexible so we took it and built our Cape Breton golf trip around that, adding (the previously chronicled) Highland Links, the (surprisingly good) Lakes near Sydney, and (the somewhat disappointing) Bulls Bay in the lovely small town of Baddeck.


So that’s enough about the logistics of booking Cabot…just do it well in advance. How was the place itself. If you’ve been to Sand Valley or Bandon, the vibes will be quite familiar. Unlike those, the main Cabot facilities are in the town of Inverness so there are other dining options and other things to do just outside of the Cabot Parking lot. And like Bandon and especially Sand Valley, the resort’s main building are very attractive, blending nicely into their dunes-and-seaside landscape. Also like Bandon and Sand Valley, the rooms and dining are excellent, with many of the latter, including ours overlooking the approach to the eighteenth green.

And also like Bandon and Sand Valley, the courses are excellent. They feel a little bit closer to Bandon than Sand Valley because they’re on the seaside and the terrain is a bit more reminiscent of the former. This is especially true for Cabot Links which of all of the courses at the three resorts, feels most like a traditional links course. While there’s some elevation change across the property, much of the interest here is in the smaller scale contours of the ground, which reminded me a lot of a traditional links course. It’s especially impressive because my understanding is that a lot of these small contours were created by the architect Ron Whitten and his shapers. The shaping on and around the greens is some of the best that I’ve seen on a new course, ranging from subtle to dramatic, with both in sensible proportions. Too many new course lean toward the latter too often.

The big question about Cabot is ‘which of the courses did you prefer?’ and the starter here told me—to my surprise—that it’s about 50/50. I was expecting that people heavily favored Cabot Cliffs, which is on a much more dramatic piece of property and has several spectacular holes. But after playing both twice, I think that the answer might reflect well on the people who come here. Yes Cabot Cliffs is more spectacular, but I think that the detail work on Cabot Links is better. There’s nothing too dramatic about almost any hole here, yet the placement of the bunkering and the shaping on and around the greens makes for consistently interesting shots. While it’s close, I’d give the nod to Cabot Links as well.


The ~540 par 5 first is an almost perfect start. There’s plenty of room out to the right but if you’re someone who could maybe reach such a hole in 2, you’ll have to skirt the big bunker on the left. And you’ll also have to skirt your approach past two bunkers that narrow the fairway about 60 yards short of the green. But there’s plenty of room to miss left once you’re past them.

I knew that I was going to like the course when I saw the shaping left of the first green. This is the degree of shaping that I wish we’d see more on new courses—enough to make shots from over here tricky, but not creating an all-or-nothing scenario where if you miss slightly, you go back and forth. It worked especially well with the (very) firm turf that we had.

The second is a ~220 yard par 3 with a moderately Biarritz green and plenty of room to run the ball on up the left side. If you miss a bit right however, the contour of the land will take your ball further away in that direction. Another example of modest, yet very effective shaping.

The course turns it up a bit on the short par 4 third, which has junk all the way up the right and a sandy mound in the left-center of the fairway about 205 yards out. Most could easily carry this but the issue is that if you drive it up the left side, away from the junk, your approach to the green will be obscured by another mound at its front-left. The green is large and modestly contoured and while you can come at most of it from an awkward distance up the left side, I think it’s best to just play something short and right of the mound and hit a wedge on.

Four, a par 4 of 450 yards up a hill, might be the most difficult hole on the course. It starts with one of the most difficult drives. There are staggered fairway bunkers, first 230 up the left, then 265 up the right. There’s another at about 315 in the middle if that’s relevant for you. You also want to be up the left side here because the green angles from front-left to back-right and has deep fronting bunkers. But there’s also plenty of open space and some possibly helpful contours at the front-left if you’re a long way out and want to run your ball up onto the green.

It’s a bit of a change of scenery for the next two holes, but one that nevertheless feels appropriate. We play slightly downhill into the bushes on the mid-length par 3 fifth. While you can see the trouble on the right, you can’t see as easily that if you stay inside the junk up the left, the ball will kick onto the green. So it’s probably best to aim slightly left here…but not too much.

The long par 4 sixth, doglegging left around a lake with a small fishing village in the background, is often considered the course’s best hole. While I’m not sure that I’d agree, it’s certainly a very good one. It looks like a cape hole, but it really doesn’t play like one because unless you can carry it about 290, you can’t carry any of the pond. And I don’t think that there’s really any advantage, except a few less yards, to driving it near the pond. Just hit something safe up the mowed path.

The approach is without a doubt one of the course’s best looking, and it’s also interesting in the course’s characteristic subtle way. There’s plenty of room to run the ball on but everything slopes gradually left, toward a nasty trench bunker left of the green. This approach might not be too hard if the course were soft, but we had to be very careful in firm conditions, especially with a left pin.

The course’s one clunky walk is the 175 yards across a road from the sixth to the seventh although I can’t imagine anyone complaining too much. This slightly downhill par 3 looks like the coast of Scotland or Ireland. And again, the shaping on and around the green is subtle and superb; there’s plenty of room short and the deeper you go, the less room you have with runoffs into hollows and bunkers. It looks modest but with firm conditions, it’s just right.

Eight is another long par 5 which is also made by subtlety on and around the green. The first task is about a 215 yard carry over junk and you’ll want to hedge a bit right because the carry is longer the further left you go.

The second is blind over some bunkers on the left which shouldn’t be too much trouble because they end 150 yards short of the green. And save for some junk way right, the approach to the green is wide open.

Yet it’s critical to play your approach up the left side because the green, while open in front, has a large swale between it and the shared thirteenth green to the right. If the pin is anywhere on the left side of the green—which appeared to be most of the pinnable area—it’s a very awkward approach over the swale to the narrowest aspect of the green if you’ve laid up to the right side. It’s much more straight-forward if you’re up the left. So it’s another hole where knowing what’s going on around the green influences how you should play it.

The ~360 yard ninth is much busier looking from the tee, but is probably one of the easier drives once you know what’s going on. Unless you can carry the centerline bunker and get near the green, you’ll never have much of a view on the approach. So the best drive is just well out to the right, short of the cluster of bunkers at about 280.

Another shortish par 4, the tenth is a bit intimidating from the tee but I found it to be one of the easiest holes on the course. The principle feature is the hill of bunkers up the right, but this was only about a 215 yard carry (downwind) and it’s wide open on the other side. Unless the flag is in the back-left, most of the green is accessible from anywhere on or around the fairway.

Eleven is another long, but interesting par 5 (the 580 yard green tees were plenty enough). The landing area is wide although everything slides right so you have to be careful about missing right.

The real interest is on the second. There’s a small bunker in the middle of the fairway about 90 yards short of the middle of the green, a massive area of fairway left of it and a small ledge right. As you might expect, you’ll have a much better view of the green from the right. The best play here is something at the bunker that can’t reach it because your ball should feed to the right. But if you pull it slightly, it’ll catch the wrong side of the slope and feed left, from where you’ll have a completely blind shot. Yet another hole that isn’t too visually dramatic, but is very thoughtful.

Twelve is a tough 450 yard par 4, especially because it was playing straight into the wind. But the hole is well-designed for this, with plenty of room off the tee and on the approach.

Thirteen is about the same length but playing the opposite direction—which meant a gap wedge rather than a 2-hybrid approach for me. The drive is blind but the fairway is wide open as long as you can keep it short of a bunker about 340 out (I almost didn’t). The approach is uphill to a double green (shared with no. 8) that’s easily the most heavily contoured on the course.

After that, we climb a hill to the highest point on the course to play its shortest hole: a downhill 90 yarder to a big green. Sounds easy, right? It isn’t. With the wind coming hard from the left, you have to aim at the left side of the green and hope that you don’t hit it too solidly and go through the wind. It’s easy to get one carry the wind and ending up down the hill to the right, as I learned from my playing partners.

The closing four holes, two downwind along the beach and two inland back into it, are among the course’s strongest. I think that the 415 yard fifteenth might be both the best of the bunch and the course’s best hole. The drive is similar to eight, although much prettier because you can see the beach.

It’s also much more important to hug the left side than it is on eight because the green is narrow but deep and has a bunker at it’s front-right, making an approach from the left side of the fairway much easier than one from the right. While the green is a bit wider in the back, it’s a tough approach shot regardless of where you are. Accuracy is critical.

Sixteen is another beauty although one with a much tougher drive. There are two bunker in the fairway about 270 out and it’s tough to stay short of them downwind with firm ground. Also, the hole is 460 yards, so there’s some temptation to get your drive a bit closer to the green. But this green is also well-designed for an approach from long range, being open across the front and having contours that allow you to run the ball onto the green from the right. Another excellent hole.

We turn back inland for the last two holes which may be less dramatic, but are almost as good. Seventeen was only playing about a 140 yards, but it was one of the longest 140 yards that I’ve seen. There’s some room over the front bunker and it’s best to hedge a bit short here because the green narrows to the back.

Although it’s quite tough, the long par 4 eighteenth is one of my favorite finishers. I find the up-and-over drive quite pleasing and much easier than the approach, which you have to thread between bunkers right and the restaurant and maybe your hotel room left. After a perfect drive, I reminded myself why hitting the ball too solidly in the wind is a problem as I nailed my 4-iron right at the middle of the green…never to be seen again.

The best approach here is something running at the left side as the ground runs away from a large dune (into which the restaurant is built on the other side) and onto the green. The green has some of the course’s heaviest contours at its left side.

I’m writing this review about four months after I played Cabot Links but only a week after returning from Bandon, so that obviously invites a comparison between them. Now Bandon as a place is obviously better because there are more courses and it’s really no harder to get to. But while I think I’d have Cabot Links behind Pacific Dunes and Bandon Trails, it compares very favorably to Bandon Dunes and Old MacDonald. It reminds me a bit of both, but in a softer, more subtle. The oceanside holes aren’t as dramatic as those on Bandon Dunes, but they’re probably just as interesting when you get into the details. And like Old MacDonald, there’s a mix of subtle and dramatic, but I think that the subtle is done a bit better here.

And as I mentioned in the intro, the latter is the real strength of Cabot Links. The shaping on and especially around the greens is as good as any new course that I’ve seen. There’s plenty of challenge, but it’s never overdone. There are always better and worse places to miss and the former are always large enough to make them a reasonable play--which is emphatically not true on several of the well-known new courses.

For the most part, Cabot Links might be the least visually spectacular of the Mike Kaiser stable of courses, but it’s definitely not one of the weakest (Sheep Ranch is definitely at the bottom, then probably Mammoth Dunes as much as I like it). Hole-for-hole, there’s a lot of interest here, although a lot of it would be stuff that you’d miss if you’re driving around drinking beer in a cart (which you can’t do) or are focused too much on a match. This is definitely a course where you want to spend a lot of time looking at the ground because as beautiful as the ocean and sand dunes are, Cabot Links’ greatest strength is what Ron Whitten and his team did around your feet.

For the Canadian golfer, pride in the work of architect Stanley Thompson stands alongside of a love of hockey and penchant for saying ‘eh’ as a national trait. Thompson’s famous ‘mountains and ocean’ course is perhaps his most famous and is a perennial member of the top 10 Canadian courses—having also spent a good amount of time at #1. The course is situated in the 200,000+ acre Cape Breton Highlands National Park which, despite its remote location at the northern end of the northernmost island of Nova Scotia, appears to be on most Canadians’ radar as a top summer destination.

Now the park itself and the beautiful Keltic Lodge hotel on a rocky peninsula jutting out into the ocean are certainly a big part of the draw, but I get the sense that the course is of almost equal billing. It’s a national landmark and we encountered golfers from all over Canada. All were familiar with the course’s renown and several mentioned that it was designed by Stanley Thompson, Canada’s most famous architect (they also all said ‘eh’ and talked about hockey). While the course has always been a remote outpost of Canadian golf, it’s become a much more justifiable trip with the development of Cabot only about an hour-and-a-half to the south. You can fly into Sydney airport from Toronto or Montreal, play the nearby Lakes at Ben Eoin (very good) and/or Baddeck Bay (not as good but still nice) as a warm-up and then out to the coast of Cape Breton Island for what’s become Canada’s top golf destination.

Highland Links has always been one of the courses that I was most interested in seeing in the world because it seems so different from other top courses. Pictures make it seem like an adventure through very different, but equally spectacular landscapes—from the sea’s edge, through rolling meadows, into and then back out of deep mountain forests. And that aspect of it did not disappoint; with the exception of not having a hole on the actual coast of the ocean (just ocean-adjacent ponds), this course goes through as many different types of environments as any I’ve seen. I’m an avid hiker and if there weren’t a golf course here, it would be one of the more memorable hikes that I’ve done. Thompson loved the variety that this property offered and he took advantage of it. I didn’t have the time to go hiking while I was up there but I think that walking two rounds on this course did the job, both in terms of seeing what the park had to offer and degree of difficulty.

Getting into the design of the course, the variety of landscapes is obviously a strength. There are many different types of beautiful holes here, running through meadows (1 and 18), along coastal ponds (3, 6) up and down through mountain valleys (7-9) and alongside mountain streams (11-12). The other strengths of the course are (1) how well Thompson used the terrain on each of the individual holes and (2) the outstanding green contours. Other than perhaps St. George’s Hill, I’ve never seen a course where the contours in the fairway play such an important role in how you want to drive the ball. And I wasn’t prepared for the greens contouring, which is a fantastic mix of bold and subtle and whose variety almost matches the variety in the landscape.

Highland Links does have a few drawbacks. The middle holes (9-12) are weak. And there’s about a 400 yard walk between the twelfth and thirteenth hole that I don’t understand. But the opening stretch has as many excellent holes and as much variety as you could want. The closing stretch, while not quite matching either of these points, is also very good and presents some good opportunities to score if you’ve gotten lost in the woods a few times up to this point.


Despite its very wide fairway, the 400 yard first is one of the toughest holes here. It probably plays about 40 ft. uphill, the fairway is as contoured as most links courses (that’ll be a feature of several other holes too), and the green has both a false front and wild interior contours. Plus it plays straight to the west, so into the prevailing wind. Uphill holes are always a good test of solid ball striking but this one throws in a few more testing elements. Not a gentle handshake to start, but certainly playable enough.

While not far from the first hole, you start to get a good sense of the variety in store with the second, which looks completely different. This is a par 4 of about 450 yards, doglegging right and running downhill. It important to hit a solid drive because there isn’t much run in the fairways. But a fade is also important because it’s easy to hit on into the trees on the left if you take a bit too safe of a line. Hugging the right tree line is the thing to do here.

Even if you pull off a great drive, there’s plenty of challenge remaining. The green is bunkerless…but is one of the two most severely contoured on the course. The primary feature is a high right shoulder, plenty large enough for a pin placement. That’s where the pin was on our first day and…it didn’t go too well for most of the members of my group.

The ~140 yard third, over a coastal pond, is one of the most idyllic par 3s that you’ll see. There’s nothing really outstanding about the design; it’s just a circular green surrounded by bunkers. But there’s a subtle ridge running from front-left to back-right across the green that makes putting difficult if you’ve missed the green or hit the wrong side of it.

From pictures that I’d seen of the course before, I figured that the fourth would be one of the less interesting holes. I was completely wrong. It’s a brilliant short par 4.

While it’s a straight-forward drive from the middle tees (just left of the third green), it’s a very challenging drive out of a chute to the right of the third green from the tips. The key feature here is the large rise in the fairway. Unless you hit it >215 or hug the right side, you’ll hit into the face of the hill and have a semi-blind or blind uphill approach to the green. And if you get aggressive, take driver or three-wood and pull it left, there’s a hidden pond left of the fairway, with the left side of the fairway sloping in this direction.

So it’s really important to hit a good drive here because if you don’t (1) the visibility on the second will be poor and (2) you’ll end up with a fairly long approach into a well-defended, narrow hilltop green. You really don’t want to be coming into this green with more than a wedge, which makes the drive critical. It’s a great example of fairway contours making a hole great—and it won’t be the last time that we’ll see this.

​The downhill par 3 fifth is another hole with great contours. The green is very wide but very shallow and fronted by a deep bowl. There’s a huge diagonal ridge running from back-left to front-right and if you hit a good shot, it should funnel into the main right section of the green. Originally, there was a pin placement short and left of this ridge but this part of the green has shrunk and it’s probably too small now. It should be expanded again.

​While the drive from the tips on the famous par 5 sixth is obviously spectacular, it’s also quite scary. We’ve been going out for the first six holes so it’s still into the wind but the hole turns a little right so it’s also quartering from the left—pushing your ball right toward the pond on the right. This drive probably isn’t too tough when it’s calm but when it is when the wind is blowing (I put one, almost two in the right pond).

​The rest of the hole doesn’t share the interest of the drive. It’s flat and pretty wide open. I think this hole has a lot of problems with flooding and there’s a lot of sandy bare ground in the middle of the fairway between the drive and the layup zone. I think the second shot would be more interest if they formalized this into a sandy waste area.

Apparently some time back some Canadian golf magazine did a list of the best holes in Canada and sixth hole was on it. This left regulars puzzled…because they thought that the par 5 seventh was better. I’d agree with them. This is one of the best par 5s that I’ve seen and pretty clearly the course’s signature hole despite the many strong contenders.

But let’s start with the negative; the forest on the left off the tee has become overgrown. Hopefully the recent Hurricane Fiona, one of the most powerful storms ever to hit this region, took care of some of them. As of July 2022, it was a butt-puckeringly narrow drive, although long hitters can just go straight over the trees (probably 240 in the air). If you go straight down the chute, you probably need to hit it 250 to carry up the slope in the middle of the fairway. If you can carry the trees to the left or 270 down the fairway, you’ll reach the far side and kick forward. Like the fourth, this is a great example of using contours to make a great drive. And it’d be even better with tree removal on the left because then you could use that hill to kick the ball forward into the fairway valley and it’d kick right if you didn’t make the carry.

While the drive is enough to make the hole excellent, all subsequent shots and the green are great too. If you’ve hit a decent drive, there’s some thinking to do on the layup (it’s 570 uphill so you’re probably not reaching in two). There are staggered bunkers left then right in the layup zone, about 130 and 90 yards short of the green respectively. The safe shot is to lay back of both but there’s enough room to get past the first one if you’ve hit a good enough drive. It’s also important to be up the right side of the fairway because the green angles from front-right to back left.

Finally, the green is one of the course’s best, funneling out to the front-left but with a lot of interesting little ripples, almost like it had settled unevenly in the course’s almost 100 year existence. All-in-all, it's one of the best par 5s that I've seen in its current state but with some work, it'd be in the very small handful of the absolute best.

The short par 4 eighth is an oddball but another one of my favorites. The drive is probably about 30 feet uphill over a ridge, with bunkers on either side. They’re only about 150 to carry but still make for a difficult shot for shorter-hitting golfers.

What makes this hole so great for the rest of us is that from the crest of the fairway at about 180 yards, it’s almost all downhill to the green. So it’s easily drivable even for those who aren’t the longest hitters. But the woods encroach on the left and you’d better be accurate if going for it. If you layup with a long iron as I did, your ball will settle on a plateau about 80 yards short of the large, heavily back-to-front sloping green. It’s a fairly easy hole if you’re careful, but I think that’s appropriate after two of the toughest back-to-back par 5s that you’ll see.

​While the course has been outstanding to this point, the next four holes are relatively weak and I don’t really understand this part of the course. The first thing that I don’t understand is the ~160 yard walk to the ninth tee. This walk is all downhill and it seems to me that Thompson could have just put the ninth tee right next to the eighth green. There’s a massive flat area in front of the current ninth tee that’d only be about 180 yards from here. There’s also a good greensite at the base of the hill just below the halfway house, left of the current fairway. That’d make for a par 4 of about 400 yards.

The current ninth is a another short par 4 (335 yards) that, like the fourth and seventh, uses fairway slopes to make the drive interesting. This time you need about 210 to carry up the slope in the fairway. If you don’t make it, you’ll have a blind approach. If you make it, you’ll still have a blind approach, but a much shorter one. What makes this drive tough is if you take on the slope and don’t hit a fade, it’s easy for the ball to kick left down into the woods. The greensite isn’t too interesting, but that’s appropriate for a blind shot.

In short, I like the current ninth hole, but I think that the routing here would feel a bit more cohesive with my alternative, which should work well in its own right.

​The tenth is a lovely downhill par 3 to a green that’s fairly large but gently crowned, making for some challenging first putts if you haven’t hit it close.

The next two holes, crossing the Clyburn Brook (more like a river) are a bit dull. The short par 5 eleventh is flat and doesn’t have any trouble between the tee and green save for dense forest. The par 3 twelfth is brutal from the tips at 240. It’s also pretty featureless save for the high right side of the green, which makes pitches from right of the green very difficult.

I suspect that this hole would have originally had a view of the river on the left and have been beautiful, but they’ve built a dyke along it to prevent this hole from becoming a swamp after it flooded.

One of the well-known things about Highland Links is the 400+ yard walk from the twelfth to the thirteenth holes. You have two options; you can hike along the river or up and over the hill through the woods. If you’re just playing once, I’d suggest the river walk.

But I don’t really understand why this walk was necessary. While the area between the holes is hilly, it isn’t like we have to go up and over a mountain. Having walked through here, it seemed like most of the area was flat enough to build a hole and looking at it on Google Earth, there’s plenty of flatter ground going toward the fourteenth green. I would think that there could have been a long par 4 or short par 5 here ending somewhere between the current thirteenth tee and fourteenth green. My version of the routing would kill the par 3 tenth, although the ninth green would be near the current eleventh tee.

But that’s not what we have. And there’s an argument to be made for the 400 yard walk in its own right. This course is almost as much about hiking as playing golf. Until 20 or 25 years ago, there were no golf carts here. So the 400 yard walk functioned as an interlude in the golf and a beautiful one at that, alongside the Clyburn Brook. I wonder if Thompson had a more golf-cohesive version of the routing but eschewed it for this one that gives you a pause in the golf and allows you to just take in the scenery?

​Anyway back to the course that’s actually here—the rest of which is very good. The 435 yard thirteenth is another take on the course’s driving theme. If you hit a strong drive up the right side that turns a bit right to left, you can get really far down the fairway. If you hit it a bit too far left, it can kick into the woods. And if you hit a weak fade, it may not go anywhere.

​The most interesting thing about the thirteenth is that we have a very similar shot on the approach and it works very well. Just short of the green there’s a massive diagonal ridge and if you’re well back in the left side of the fairway, you can use this to sling a ball onto the green (as I learned). But if you don’t run it far enough, the ball will run off to the left or right and leave an awkward pitch to much of the green. Apparently the green used to be a punchbowl but this was revised for drainage’s sake. I’m sure that something was lost but the hole is still very good as-is.

While the right-to-left slope of the thirteenth hole will feel comfortable to most right-handers, the dogleg left fourteenth will not, especially if you play the back tees. Both sides of the hole slope gently away and it’s really critical to hit a straight ball or a slight draw here. It’s only about 220 to run into the woods on the right. The problem is that the hole is 400 yards and plays into the wind so if you hit a long iron, you’ll be pretty far back.

And the green, while it looks innocent enough, is no joke if the pin is on the right. This right right half of the green slopes severely away and you’d be in trouble being anywhere left of this pin. It’s much easier if the pin is on the left but like the first, this hole seriously demands solid ball striking…and is less forgiving of inaccuracy.

Fifteen and Sixteen are back-to-back par 5s that are about as good and more fun than six and seven. The drive on fifteen is very reminiscent of seven with a narrow chute, trees and a hill on the left, and a hill that you can carry if you hit a good drive. Like seven, it could use some major tree removal on the left. It’s tougher to reach or clear the hill here, probably ~300 yards. But the second shot is much simpler if you’re laying up, to fairly flat ground and no bunkers.

The green and its surroundings are outstanding. This was all fairly flat land and Thompson built a massive ridge around the green, into which he carved his elegant bunkers. While many of the bunkers on this course have become degraded over time, those on this hole look excellent—probably thanks to work done by Canadian architect Ian Andrew over the last decade-and-a-half. The green is two-tiered and is one of the course’s most challenging if you find yourself far from the hole.

Sixteen is undoubtedly the easiest of the course’s five par 5s at only 460 yards and with an (almost) unmissably wide fairway. But it’s also the most fun. And whatever the par, it’s an excellent hole.

The fairway is quite something—bumpier than almost any links course that I’ve played. A lot fairways here have this bumpiness, but this one is easiest the most bumpy. And apparently all of this was constructed by Thompson and his associates, with Thompson directing the placement of rock and dirt to achieve the look and playing characteristics that he wanted.

​The approach to the hilltop green is also excellent. The major feature here is an almost wall-like hill about 60 yards short of the green. You’ll need to hit a solid shot if coming in from some distance because you’ll be unlikely to run the ball up this. Most decent length hitters should have a chance at the green off a good drive so this shot is a excellent test of a long iron or fairway wood. The green is narrow and runs off at the left, so you’ll also need to be accurate.

​Seventeen is pleasant-looking enough, but you need to be very careful to stay below the hole here because there’s a steep ridge that runs horizontally across the middle of the green.

​It would have been nice if Thompson could have sent the seventeenth hole to the left behind the first green so that the eighteenth could have finished along the ocean. That would have brought the course back from mountains to ocean and would have made for quite an exciting finish.

But the eighteenth is a good hole in its own right. While it’s pretty wide open off the tee, I found it to be very easy to lose my ball to the right for some reason (maybe the alignment of the tee box, which points that way).

You want to aim up the left side because this leaves the best angle into probably the most steeply pitched green on the course. The green both angles and slopes from back-right to front-left and if the pin is in the front-left bowl, you’re much better off missing the green short than anywhere else.

Perhaps more than any course I can think of, Highlands Links is an almost perfect expression of its site (Greywalls in Michigan is up there too). On this land, winding rivers run between forested mountains, out to tidal ponds and finally the sea. Despite my issues with the routing in a few places, it does its main job of exposing you to all of that very well. Like I said, if there weren’t a golf course here, this would be the hiking path that you’d want to take through this land.

So the land is incredibly well-used on the macro-level. But it’s also well-used on a micro-one. The land’s contours provide the course’s main source of driving challenge and opportunity. On at least a half-dozen holes, a well-conceived and well-executed drive can catch a slope and bound forward while one that isn’t well-conceived or isn’t well-executed will hit and upslope and leave a difficult second. This isn’t an accident; even with the same routing, a lesser architect could have put the fairways in slightly different places and lost much of the greatness of holes 4, 7, 8, 13, and 15. The only course that I can think of which uses slopes in the fairways so effectively is Colt’s great St. George’s Hill.

I was also a bit surprised by how good the greens were. Given the reputation of both Thompson and the course, I probably shouldn’t have been. But there’s so much variety in these greens. Some have big, heaving slopes (2, 18). Some have tiers or internal ridges (3, 5, 15). And some just have a lot of less-describable contour (7). If you put this set of greens on an otherwise average course, it’d stand out in most neighborhoods.

I really wish that there were more courses like this: national park courses that took advantage of their spectacular locations. Canada has two more of them: Jasper Park and Banff Springs, both designed by Stanley Thompson in the 30s, I’d imagine to stimulate employment. It’d be great to have courses like these in some of America’s national parks. Imagine if Donald Ross or Alastair MacKenzie had been given a similar mandate to build a course in Yellowstone or on the outskirts of either Great Smoky Mountain National Park or Yosemite? Perhaps then we could have learned to bring golf together with the broader conservation movement and avoid some of the destructive wastefulness that the sport has embraced over the past few decades.

One of the courses that I’ve most wanted to see in my home state of Michigan for awhile now has been Barton Hills in Ann Arbor. While the course has never been too bright a star on lists of the best courses in the state, it’s a Donald Ross course that was restored a few years back by Ron Pritchard. And the pictures that I had seen of the course post-restoration, while not numerous, made it seem very appealing. I’ll always bet on a few pictures of a course over its position (or not) on course rankings as an indicator of whether I’ll like the course.

And it worked here too; the course is every bit as good as what I hoped it might be from the pictures and severely underrated on lists of the best courses in Michigan. It’s easily one of the top 10 and might even make the cut for the top 5. While the course has its share of excellent holes—especially the par 3s—what stands out to me are the green complexes. They aren’t one of the most severe sets in the state, but are full of interesting small contours. Even better is how well they meld with their surroundings. To me, the detail at the edges of the greens is almost ideal. Some spots blend into the surrounding contour, some are built up.

And this combination has great effect on how you should play shots into these greens. Barton Hills has some of the best ‘tucked’ pin positions I’ve seen on any course, where you take on a lot of risk playing to them because of the severe slopes at the nearby edges, but it’s always possible to play to a safe area. While they don’t share the extensive short grass areas around the greens, these greens remind me of Pinehurst no.2 in the sense that there’s always a seriously bad miss but it isn’t too hard to play safe and leave yourself something more manageable.

The bunkering is also some of the best in the state and while the land on the front nine is modest, it’s always very pleasant. Then the Ann Arbor hilliness kicks in on the back nine, which lends some variety to the course. I would say that the course comes up a bit short on the longer par 4s and 5s which sometimes lack a bit of interest, but there’s no doubt to me that this is one of the best courses in the state and perhaps its most underrated.


The first hole, a ~425 yard par 4 is actually a bit of an un-Donald Ross start in that it’s a pretty tough par 4. But it’s also one of the best on the course; there’s real advantage to keeping close to the bunkers up the left side because the hole turns left and it’ll be quite a long approach if you bail out right. But if you do, the green is one of the more open in front and you can run a ball on.

This is one of several greens with a very interesting—and difficult—tucked pin. Check out the front-right pin! Still, it’s always possible to play to the middle of the green and that leaves an uphill putt of the greenskeeper has been unfavorable to you on this day.

The 525 yard second hole shouldn’t be too tough of a hole. While you can’t see the landing area very well, it’s wide-open until a bunker on the right at about 290. But there’s nice subtlety to this hole; it gently turns right and while going up the right side shortens the shot to the green, it also makes the angle more awkward for the layup. This is especially true if you layup short of the bunkers ~75 yards short of the green because the ground there slopes left. The green is also more open from the left side.

While it’s awkward, I liked the sharp dogleg left long par 4 3rd. This is a very difficult hole—about 475 even from the second-to-back tees. And you either need to really cut the tree line close or hit a big draw. It’s easy to leave yourself too long an approach to reach the green. But even if you hit a long drive, it’s still much better to be in the left side of the fairway because the green is tightly bunkered on the right and there’s plenty of room to run one in on the left.

Four is the first short par 4 and I think that most days, it’s a pretty simple hole. The fairway is wide short of 250 and the green is both pretty big and not too heavily contoured.

There’s one exception to this—when the pin is back-right, which it was on this day. This is an extremely dangerous pin to play at, with deep bunkers just short-right and another long. But as we saw at the first and will see several more times, you can reduce the risk by playing just a little bit away from the pin. 15-20 ft. left should be sufficient…which someone in my group got just right!

Our first par 3, the ~170 yard fifth fits the theme. The front of the green is pretty wide, although pitched at a bit of an angle to the tee so it doesn’t quite look it. But the back gets very narrow between deep bunkers and I would advise to play well short of these pins, never past the middle of the green. I tried but failed to follow my own advice, ending up in a bunker pin-high right and was lucky to leave with a 4.

I suspect that the most-criticized hole at Barton Hills is the short par 4 sixth. The drive is mostly blind between bunkers but unlike the second, the blindness here obscures a pond that cuts into the middle of the hole at about 270. Although I’m not a fan of the trend, this is one hole that’d be better if the moved the tees up to where you could drive the green because otherwise, you should never play it any other way but iron—short-iron.

While the rest of the hole is nothing special, the large green on the mid-length par 4 seventh is a beauty. It’s big and indescribably rolling. All of the edge pins here are tough because all parts of the green slope off in the front and there’s also a pretty good drop-off at the back. As usual, you can play to the middle of the green without too much trouble but on this hole especially if the pin is near an edge, it’ll leave you a tough two-putt.

The eighth is the second of Barton Hills’ four excellent par 3s. One of the great things about these par 3s—which is characteristic of most great sets of par 3s—is how much they differ from each other. This one, which can play up to around 220, is very different from five. There’s plenty of room to run the ball onto the green (as you’d want on a long par 3) and the green is very receptive, build into a natural rise. This creates a nice backstop if you run one in a bit too hot but because the green also slopes to the right, you feed your ball right to the tucked back-right pin with a bit of a draw.

The next two holes are par 5s, long and short (560 and 460) respectively. Neither is a particularly strong hole but you need to be very careful on ten as there’s another blind pond that cuts in on the left about 50 yards short of the green. I found it to be a blessing in disguise here that I hit a bad drive and had to lay up because it’s not a green I’d want to go at from any kind of distance.

Eleven is another long par 3 playing up to 240 and like eight, you can run the ball onto the green. Unlike eight, the green gives you no assistance here because it’s gently built up on a pad an runs away at the back. It’s best to hedge short and left here. The length may be similar to eight, but it’s a very different hole.

Twelve is another short par 4 with a pond but unlike the two previous pond holes, this is a very good one. In fact, this might be the best driving hole on the course. At only about 300 to the front of the green even from the back tee block, long hitters could try driving this green. But it’s a good 250 carry over the pond on the direct line and it gets tight, with deep bunkers around the deep, shallow green.

It’s also a good driving hole for the rest of us because you can either cut off some of the pond to shorten the approach or play to the right and avoid it altogether. If you do this, you must be careful not to go too far because bunkers angle in through the fairway and they’re close enough that it’s easy to reach them with any kind of push (they start at ~210 out).

The rest of the back nine is mostly a procession of back-and-forth par 4s that are pretty straight-forward off the tee but have very interesting and diverse greens. Both thirteen and eighteen have large bunkers at the start of the fairway that obscure more directly threaten bunkers further up. But this hole nearly as interesting off the tee as at the green, which has a bit of a false front and funnels in at its left and right.

Like thirteen, fourteen has a fairway bunker left that long hitters (so not me) should easily clear. While the thirteenth green was concave, this one is convex, sloping off at its edges into bunkers. There’s a classic Barton Hills pin placement at the back-right of the green. You really don’t want to miss if you go at this one.

The terrain is much hillier for the next two holes. I’m not a big fan of the fifteenth, which is blind off the tee, downhill and over a bunker. The fairway is wide—but don’t miss right. The approach is probably 25 feet uphill, so it’s a tough one.

As is the ~200 yard par 3 sixteenth, which probably has the course’s most severe green. While you must be below the pin here, you also must be careful not to be too far below the pin because the green has a pretty good false front.

Seventeen is the longest par 4 on the back nine, stretching to about 480 at the tips. It’s also the best driving hole (other than maybe the twelfth), with a bunker cutting into the left side just about where you’d want to land the ball if playing from the correct set of tees. There’s also a rise in the fairway at the bunker, so you need a pretty good drive to get to a point where you have a good view of the green. And with a tree line and out-of-bounds, there’s no bail out right.

The green is another good one but it’s elevated above its surroundings and tough to hit. Apparently this hole used to be a par 5 and the green might make a bit more sense in that context. But there’s room to bail out short of the green and because of that, I didn’t mind the difficulty.

The final drive is a tough on because like thirteen, the fairway is blind and a bunker cuts in on the left side right where you’d want to drive it. There are several bunkers short and right on the approach, but there’s plenty of room to run the ball onto this large green.

There have been a lot of restorations and renovations of classic courses over the past decade. While I’ve only seen a few of these and I never saw Barton Hills before the renovations, I have to imagine that this was one of the better ones. The detail on an around the greens is as good as I’ve seen anywhere, although I would say that overall, these greens aren’t as difficult as on some of the famous classic courses or on some of the new, neo-golden-age courses.

And I think that this latter point is a real strength for Barton Hills. There’s plenty of interest in the greens throughout, but they’re never severe…unless you miss in a place where you shouldn’t. Over and over again, I see new courses where several of the greens have too many areas around them that are too severe. The worst example of this is Greywalls in the UP, where there are several greens where unless you hit some sliver of land, there’s a good chance that you’ll go back-and-forth across the green on your next few shots. And it isn’t the only example. I don’t mind greens with some severe edges, but this has to be a limited percentage of the overall edges of the green. There must be some realistic bail out space.

That’s the lesson that Pinehurst no.2 teaches so well and Barton Hills exemplifies it better than almost any other course that I’ve played. There is severity here, but unless you’re too aggressive or careless, you’ll probably won’t encounter it. There’s a way for a weaker player to play every hole. But set the pins in some of their tougher spots and this course will be plenty challenging for almost anyone.

I think my main criticism of Barton Hills is that there could be more variety off the tee. There are plenty of fairway bunkers and some tough driving holes, but they’re usually off to the side of the fairway and there’s never too much thinking as long as you hit it straight. It’s still a good course off the tee, but that’s probably enough to keep Barton Hills below the All-American tier of courses (the greens are certainly good enough). Still, Michigan probably has at most 3 or 4 All-American courses and if this one falls just short of that, that’s still pretty good.

Of all the courses that I’ve documented on here, the one with which I probably have the longest history is the University of Michigan. I’ve been playing here for 20 years, since I started (or maybe even before—I can’t remember) as an undergrad here in the fall of 2003. Around that time, I had really wanted to play the course and was excited to finally have the opportunity because it was, and remained until recently, a private course. My initial view: very nice course, but nothing special. I didn’t prefer it to some of the other (at the time) top Michigan courses that I had played, like the Fazio Course at Treetops or Tom Doak’s Black Forest.

But the U of M course has gotten a lot of attention in recent years. Mike DeVries has done some work, taking out trees and bushes and expanding a few greens. And it’s gotten attention from the new set of social golf course influencers, namely the guys at No Laying Up on their Michigan tour. They and several of the guys I play with in Michigan love the course. The pedigree is certainly there; it’s a MacKenzie—Maxwell design on an interesting, hilly piece of property. And it has a fine set of greens including two unusual, sort-of horseshoe shaped greens on 6 and 14 that wind around a bunker.

Yet in the 20 years that I’ve been playing it, I’ve had one opinion of the course, which I’m now pretty convinced is unshakable, at least for the course in its current form: it’s a good golf course with a few very interesting greens and nice terrain, but nothing more. There are some good holes, but none stands out to me as a great one. And the trees, while not as bad as they used to be, are still awful. Several holes are made worse (in some cases substantially) by trees being way too close to the fairway (3,4,11,16,17). For all the talk of MacKenzie, Maxwell, and strategy, there’s mainly one thing that you need to do here and you need to do it on pretty much every hole: just hit the ball straight down the fairway. It’s occasionally a bit more complicated than that, but usually not.

I mentioned that the greens are pretty good and they are. A few are very interesting including the two horseshoe greens nos. 6 and 14 plus the greens on 4, 10, and 2 (if I’m being generous). The rest are good, but nothing special (I’ll get to the 3rd). And the bunkers definitely suggest MacKenzie—Maxwell in their shapes, but have none of the dramatic height/depth of their more famous works. I don’t know if that’s because they’ve become degraded over time and need to be restored or if they just didn’t build wild bunkers here perhaps because of the heavier soil. In any case the bunkering is good, but leaves something to be desired stylistically (and often in placement).

Some very knowledgable people think that I’m crazy for just thinking that this is a good course, but I know several others who share my views. In fact, until recently, this seemed to be the consensus: good course, maybe one of the better ones in Michigan, but nothing special, at least until they do a serious restoration. That was my view the first time I saw it and—despite a few years between visits and the belief each time I return that something will click for me and the greatness of the course will be revealed—it remains my view.

​
The first is a solid par 5. You can swing away off the tee because the bunker on the left is either too far out or you’re playing the wrong tees. The bigger issue is that two very ugly Siberian Elms (this species should be eradicated) in the right rough can partially block you if you push it.

It’s a simple layup as long as you don’t try to get within 75 yards of the green. The green is small but interesting; high in the center, sloping gently to its sides. Good starting hole with a subtle, but good green.

One of the shots that’s always stood out to me at U of M is the drive on the medium-long par 4 second. It’s straight uphill and blind; definitely not the type of shot you typically find on a US public course. It’s a very good driving hole because if you can get it about 250, you’ll hit the downslope and just have a short iron. But like many holes here, it’s not that wide and it doesn’t take much of a push to end up behind a landscaping tree on the right or a pull to end up in the junk on the left.

The par 5 third seems to be a favorite, mostly for its green site. I think that my favorite part is the drive. Again it’s pretty simple—you’ll be fine if you just hit it straight because you can’t go for the green in two. But there’s a decision to made about carrying the bunker on the right (225-240 depending on where they put the tips) and it’s better to be up the right side because it leaves a clearer view for the second.

The next two shots can be very awkward and it’s best to keep things simple. Unless you drive it 330 and get a mid or long iron into the green, don’t even think about going for it. Just hit a mid-iron straight ahead to the end of the fairway. If you try to cut the corner, you’ll end up in the spruce trees of death and spend 10 minutes looking for your ball…like one of my playing partners did when I played here once back in college.

The approach is uphill to a green benched on the side of a hill. A lot of people seem to love this green. I don’t understand why. Of everywhere in the immediate area where you could put a green, this looks like the worst spot, halfway up a hill requiring the construction of a massive ledge. To be fair, once you’re up there, the green itself is interesting, with a nasty little tier at the front-right.

But I’ve never been a fan of this green site and despite writing three paragraphs about it, I just don’t find this hole all that interesting. Yes it’s a good driving hole, but everything else is just awkward.

I’ve always liked the fourth hole but the encroaching trees on the right are a big problem. One thing that I always thought they’d do in a restoration here is remove the rough over the fairway bunker 40 yards short of the green so that you could run the ball on. Still haven’t done it. The green is very good; big with a lot of little rolls. But I’m not as impressed by it as I used to be and this is one hole that I think could (and should) be a lot better.

Five is a nice medium-length par 3 that used to be surrounded by big oak trees. I heard they lost those to disease or maybe a storm. It’s a very nice hole either way, with a green like one that has a high point in the middle and runs off to the sides.

Six is U of M’s most famous hole; the short par 4 with the horseshoe green. I’ve always liked this hole, but now I’m pretty sure that I don’t love it. It’s pretty easy if the pin is in the front because the green slopes toward most of the pin placements. It’s much more difficult and interesting if the pin is in the back. But unlike the superior horseshoe 7th green at Crystal Downs, you can’t putt from much of the front part to the back part. Vice versa works, but why would you ever be at the back of the green if the pin is in the front?

The downhill, yet blind medium-short par 4 seventh always gives people trouble. It’s easy to end up in the trees left and if you push it a little, a slope right of the fairway will push you toward junk/landscape trees right. Just pull an iron and hit it straight.

I’ve always liked the uphill par 3 eighth, which is probably my favorite of the course’s par 3s (I tend to like uphill par 3s). I think it’s a much more appealing hillside green site than the third and the bunkering is well-done, if nothing too special.

The par 4 ninth is one of the course’s better driving holes but it’s deceptive. You’d think that you’d want to skirt the fairway bunkers but no, the angle into the green is better from the right side of the fairway, near Ohio Buckeye trees. I’m a big fan of the Ohio Buckeye as a landscape tree but I have no idea why they planted so many of them here and at Radrick Farms. Maybe the tree farm guy was a closet Ohio State fan?

Ten is an uninteresting uphill drive and while the approach also isn’t too interesting, the green is. It’s big and receptive, but with a lot of little ridges. The pin placement on this day was in a little bowl at the back.

The par 5 eleventh exemplifies the main problem with U of M: too many trees too close to the fairway. And U of M probably has the worst planted species of any course that I’ve seen. Left of this fairway are Dawn Redwoods from China and Norway Spruce. These are awful tree species for a golf course because they suck up balls and completely block shots. As silly as it was to plant the symbol of their chief rival on their golf course, at least the Ohio Buckeye is native in the area.

Twelve is the course’s long par 3 and I guess it’s pretty good; there’s ample room to run the ball onto the green. But I’ve never seen the course play firm enough for this to work and I think that the ridge at the front-right is a bit too steep. It’s never been one of my favorite long par 3s.

The short par 4 thirteenth is more interesting and I did something that I’ve never done before on my most recent playing: play from the back tee that’s tucked into the trees. Really, it’s a good hole from anywhere because the massive fairway bunker on the left side makes you think about what you want to do with your drive. It’s easy just to lay up short and you’ll still have a short approach if you do. But there’s an advantage in taking it on as you can have a very short pitch. The green is a bit big and dull for it to be a great hole, but it is a good one.

Fourteen is the other horseshoe par 3. It’s a very nice green but I’m not sure that the horseshoe is contributing too much here; I’d probably like the hole more if the green were just the back two-thirds. That front part isn’t doing anything for me.

Fifteen is another medium-length par 4 and one that I’ve come to appreciate more over the years. It’s a very good hole because it makes you do something from the tee, namely keep your drive close to the spruce trees on the left. There’s a lot of room out to the right but the approach to the green is very awkward from there because it angles from front-left to back-right along a bunker.

Still, it’s a bit ironic that the main reason that this hole is good is because of spruce trees. The trees make it good because they can knock your ball out of the area and you can end up dead underneath them. That introduces much more risk to going up the left side than if there were deciduous trees or bunkers.

I don’t think that any of the last three holes here is on anyone’s list of favorites. Sixteen and seventeen are both straight-away par 4s with drives excessively cluttered by trees. The trees on seventeen are the worst on the course. Trees between the fairways completely obscure a very interesting joint fairway bunker.

A lot of people seem to like eighteen even less, but I’ve never minded it. I’ve always thought that it was a pretty good driving hole. If you keep it less than 260 from the tips, the fairway is huge. If you want to go further than that, you have to hit it straight. But you can’t go much further because the pond is about 325 out. Nothing about the approach is very inspiring, but it’s a solid long par 4 finisher.

So there’s my take on U of M. There’s a lot to like about the course; several good greens, a few very good holes, generally interesting terrain. But there really isn’t a moment here where I feel that the course is giving me something special. I don’t think that there are any great holes. And the trees, despite many being removed over the years, are still really bad. I can’t think of a course that has a worse collection of tree species than this one—even Forest Akers West at Michigan State, which is an actual arboretum!

I would not rule out that there’s a version of this course that’s a very good or even great course. It’s got the land for it. But that course is a long way off. This one needs a lot of tree removal and a lot of work on the greens and bunkers. I was excited a decade or so back when I heard that Mike DeVries was going to be working on the course. I thought that it would become the course that I hoped it could be. Unfortunately the changes haven’t done much to move the needle with me and I’m afraid that the course isn’t substantively different than it was when I started playing it 20 years ago.

How do I think it compares to other Michigan courses? I definitely prefer its sister course Radrick Farms just up the road. The terrain there is even better and while it may not be Pete Dye’s most strategically interesting course, it’s more interesting than this one. I drew (expected) heat for saying it, but I don’t think that U of M is much better than the crown jewel of Ann Arbor Parks and Recreation’s set of municipal courses, Leslie Park. That course is also on very interesting terrain and save for the fact that the greens aren’t as nuanced and there are 1 or 2 awkward holes, it compares favorably to this one.

For me, U of M doesn’t sniff Michigan’s top 10 public courses. It might be in the 25, but even that’d be close for me. In the greater Detroit area—which is certainly not a repository of the state’s best public courses—it’s probably in the top 5, but that’s it. I prefer 1-18 at Shepherd’s Hollow (but not 19-27) and it’s a close call with Blackheath, the Orchards, and Coyote Preserve. I’d probably take it over Calderone Farms. So that puts it in the 2-5 range; pretty good, but definitely not the lofty company in which some people I know—and whose opinions I respect—would have it.