What Will Be The Next Ballyneal or Pacific Dunes

[kconway]

What are the courses that are currently being built/designed that will be the next great courses?

[Jim Nugent]

Old Mac

[David Stamm]

Union Bay and Querencia (Hanse).

[Greg Krueger]

Dormie Club in Pinehurst looks like a C&C classic. Too bad few will get to see it.

[Craig Sweet]

I think I played it last week...Rock Creek Cattle Co.

[Chip Gaskins]

Cabot Links, Dormie Club, Prairie Club (2 courses)

[Dan Herrmann]

Cabot Links

[Tim Gavrich]

There's a big difference between Ballyneal and Pacific Dunes...Ballyneal is more of a getaway destination course that few players will get to enjoy, and therefore, care about.  Pacific Dunes is available to all who have a couple hundred bucks to play golf and a little time to get there.

The real question: which will be more useful to the game: the "next" Ballyneal, or the "next" Pacific Dunes?

[Dan Herrmann]

Tim - in that context, it'd be Pacific Dunes as the model for me.

99.34% of us golfers have zip chance of getting on Ballyneal.

[Tom_Doak]

The next Pacific Dunes was Barnbougle, and I expect the next will probably be Bill Coore's second course there.  Land doesn't get any better than that.  Hopefully David Kidd's course at Machrihanish Dunes turned out that well, too -- I'm way more interested to see that one than the Castle Course.

Our next course of that quality is likely to be a private one, unfortunately.  But we're also talking to someone about a VERY good site in an unlikely US location that would be a true public course, and it's the kind of thing that could come together really quickly.

[Dan Herrmann]

Tom - you tease!

[Tom_Doak]

Dan:

I'm not teasing, but until those projects are really going to happen, I am not going to say anything specific about them for fear of jinxing them.  Look at what happened to Gil's course at The Prairie Club and tell me I'm wrong.

[Joey Smith]

We won't tell anyone Tom...

[Tom_Doak]

Joey:

I promise you guys will be the first to know.  Maybe sometime in October.

[Tim Bert]

Can I drive there from Nashville, play 18, and drive back home in a 24 hour period?

Just tell us that.

[Dan Herrmann]

Tom - I wasn't serious...  You obviously can't say anything. 

[Chip Gaskins]

-  a VERY good site
- in an unlikely US location
- would be a true public course
- could come together really quickly

let the guessing begin 

i'll take the first stab....OK this might be hard.

VERY (in capital letters) good site= must be ballyneal, pac dunes  type good....not much of that type land laying fallow 
unlikely = gulf coast, oklahoma, puerto rica, alaska
true public = non resort, non $400 rates (probably means government owned land), military base (so that's what they are doing with Gitmo
come together quickly = a government/public agency that is motivated or a private developer with the government agencies in his pocket

Tom - Seriously, we all super duper promise not to say or post on golf architecture websites....seriously we promise, you believe us, right

[Dan Herrmann]

Chip - come on, man...  Great Lakes region!  Shore of Lake Erie or Lake Ontario! 

[Michael Dugger]

Barnbougle and Machrihanish #2 sounds epic!!

What is the working name for Barnbougle2 again?  I wanna say the "lost course" or something like that....

[Tim Gavrich]

If it's a really good bit of land in an unlikely US location, perhaps it's a piece of land is uncommonly good for its location.  I'd have to think it may be an east coast location, maybe?  Chesapeake Bay?  Florida?

Hartford County, CT?  Rockbridge County, VA? 

[Kyle Henderson]

Grateful Dunes and Old MacDonald...

[cary lichtenstein]

Tom

I hope it's in Florida

Cary

[Cliff Hamm]

What is the current status of Cabot Links?

[Richard Boult]

Our next course of that quality is likely to be a private one, unfortunately.

Interesting that you feel this is unfortunate.  That's exactly how I feel about Ballyneal and other outstanding private courses... very "unfortunate" most of us will never be able to play them.  I will be forever grateful for Bandon, Barnbougle and the likes.

[Tom_Doak]

Art:

I don't really object to the idea of private clubs.  The right of free association is well defended here, and on top of that I have found nearly all of the private golf clubs in the world to be very accommodating to a serious student of golf architecture (although your mileage may vary).  On top of that, most of the private courses I've built (except Sebonack) have been very accommodating to fans of my work -- Stonewall and Ballyneal especially so.

From an architect's perspective, the great thing about getting to do a great PUBLIC course is that so many more people will see it over the years, and the magazines will write about it time and again because their readers can go play it.  For me, Pacific Dunes and to a lesser extent Barnbougle and Cape Kidnappers are like permanent free advertisements in the golf magazines.