I played here twice last weekend.
The Fried Egg has a nice review which I can find little to disagree with.
http://www.friedegg.co/golf-courses/sand-valley-reviewBeginning with his intro picture "minimalism is a theme from the start at Sand Valley"
The drive in (for now) is about 1/2 mile down a gravel/sand road. It is manned by some local kids sitting there with a tee sheet, allowing those with tee times to pass (the area loves this development as far as i can tell, because of the local employment in an area that could use some). The entrance drive is through some dunescape, and that set the tone for me. This was going to be some adventure golf.
Since Jason Way's trip - it looks like they may have opened #10, pics and description from Fried Egg:
Hole #10 - Par 5 - 580 yardsOn to the back side and the downhill par 5 10th. A good drive must avoid the large bunker that sits in the middle of the wide fairway. From the fairway, a player is left with a downhill shot to the green protected by a massive bunker on the right side. A good shot will funnel the ball down to the middle of the green and close to the pin with this punchbowl like green complex.
My comments: this tee shot confused all of us. You can see the left-center line bunker in the landing zone. My first time through, I guessed that there must be some advantage to hitting it left of the bunker in the narrow cut of fairway. So did my playing partners, so we all aimed there. Some of them hit it into that slot, some others (
) didn't. In the end, none of us saw any advantage gained by threading that little needle, so next time through just wailed away to the right of that bunker.
At the end of the day: most of us loved it. The few that didn't preferred greener traditional U.S. parkland golf. But not me. From the very first tee, strategy was required (the better strategies weren't evident until after playing the holes). Something always lured us into taking more risky lines than advisable. Take #1 for instance:
With a right to left wind, most of us wanted to cut something off and head more directly towards the green. After playing it, we turned back and said "there's 80 yards of fairway out to the right" which, while giving a bit tougher approach, was an obvious play that the visual from the tee concealed.
Views, terrain, strategy, elevation change, ground game, seclusion - that's how I'd sum it up. I'll be back there as often as I can.