There are several purposes to this post:
1) To obviate the need for Chris Johnston to make any more painful hints,
2) To pre-empt people from starting to call it the Doak course, and
3) To share my enthusiasm for an exciting new project.
After months of speculation, negotiation, and more than a little bit of legwork, I am pleased to announce that Renaissance Golf Design will be building a second 18 holes at Dismal River Club in Nebraska, funded by a recent membership assessment (!). In fact, my associate Brian Slawnik has already mowed out our layout over the past couple of weeks, and I will be joining Don Mahaffey in Nebraska over the weekend to start the logistical work on putting in the irrigation system.
It is an honor to be working in the sand hills region. In all, I've looked at six different sites in western Nebraska over the past ten years. But I've always understood I would probably only get one chance to build a course in the area -- because every owner wants a different architect for their course, and because most owners feel like they deserve an exclusive arrangement with their architect, even if they don't want to pay extra for it.
The more you know about the sand hills, the harder it is to give up on all the sites you haven't seen.
Dismal River has some unnatural advantages over other potential projects in the region. There is a lot of infrastructure in the ground there -- the clubhouse, some beautiful cabins, a vast maintenance complex and staff housing -- with the debt wiped away. Now, for the price of a $2.5 million golf course, Chris has the potential to double the revenues not just from golf, but from the rooms and the dining operation, if we can build a golf course that's as good the original 18 holes.
However, we're not there to compete with Jack's course. We've got a routing which we believe will make for a great course in its own right. That's a tall order in a region with Sand Hills and Ballyneal, and I'm not sure I could have been confident about the outcome if this were just another course in the dunes.
Here's where the river comes in. Anyone who has been to see the place knows that after 15 miles of entrance road, when you cross the river and turn for the clubhouse, you've entered a special landscape … with the Dismal River sheltered by a 200-foot bluff to the north. You don't see any of that from the Nicklaus course, but that will be the setting for the new course, with the first eight holes above the road and the "back ten" down below.
Since all the land close to the clubhouse is committed to cabins and founder's lots, it was inevitable that any new course would have a remote start and finish. But, I figured it wasn't essential for those two points to be in the same place -- so I had the freedom of coming up with a routing plan that starts in one place and finishes in another.
Our routing will start along the entrance road about a half mile from the clubhouse -- right where the road forks to go up to the maintenance building. There is an upper loop of eight holes, playing clockwise back to the starter's hut [if we bother to build one]; then the short par-4 ninth heads straight along a ridge toward the bluff, overlooking the river. The back nine loops out to the east, and gradually descends toward the river, with the last three holes playing in the bottom of the valley close to the Dismal. [Actually, now that I think about it, in plan the routing is sort of the shape of a lasso.]
The best compliment I've had on it so far is Chris' observation that he thought the course would have to play up and down the valleys in the dunes, but our layout, for the most part, does other things instead.
So, what we seek is a course in a sand-dune environment, with more of the variety of landscape to be found in the big-sky country of Rock Creek. Those who think the highlight of my courses are the par-4 holes, will not be disappointed with short par-4's like the 6th, 9th and 15th, and long par-4's like the 13th, 17th, and 18th; while those of you who have opined that my par-3 holes are kind of weak, will have to take it back by the time you've played the third hole, or for sure by the time you limp off the fifth.
I am headed west tomorrow to finalize some of the details and to meet some of the members who have supported our involvement; I may try to post some pictures once I'm there. If anyone is coming to the sand hills in August or September, come out and see us at work, trying to get a little bit of golf in the ground as a head start for next year.