Have You Played on Sand Greens?

[Sam Morrow]

As I prepare for a trip to midwest my mind races with all the great adventures and places I will play and see. Something that I keep thinking about is playing a course with sand greens, who has played them and where did you play?

[Brandon Urban]

Sam,

There's a fun 9 hole golf course in Baldwin, KS just south of where I live with sand greens.

I actually learned to play at a golf course in Larned, KS that had sand greens. You can imagine my excitement a year later when I actually stepped foot on grass greens! It is definitely something that I think every golfer should experience at least once.

Brandon

[Sam Morrow]

Brandon I was looking at the map, do you know of anything near Prairie Dunes?

[Brandon Urban]

The closest I know of are around 2 hours away. I will do some checking tomorrow and get back to you.

[Sam Morrow]

Thanks a bunch.

[Tommy Williamsen]

My wife is from Jamestown, ND.  Before we were married I spent a couple of days with her folks.  At that time my wife did not play golf but did like to walk the course with me.  Jamestown had a 9 hole public course.  I had never seen sand greens before and was taken by surprise.  Fortunately, I was playing with a guy who knew the ins and outs of playing them.  First and last time I saw sand greens.

[Bob_Huntley]

I played on three courses with sand greens in what was then Southern Rhodesia. The one that comes to mind was at Beit Bridge close to the South Afican border. Another was a nine holer on the Nuanetsi Ranch, probably the largest  privately owned ranch in Africa. I was boasting about its size to an Australian friend of mine and he put me in my place with the size of his place in the Northen Territory, something like a million or more acres.

The sand was oiled and you took the back of a rake or a piece of wood on a broomstick and cleared a path for the ball to run. Give the ball a vigorous bash and the results were oustanding; no grain everything was a straight put.

Remembering it now reminds me that one can enjoy golf in any conditions as long as it is done at a decent pace.

Bob

[Scott Warren]

My club out in the country before I moved to Sydney was in a pennant league where one of the clubs had sand greens - Portland GC, near Lithgow.

It was always a highlight of the season to go out there to play.

The sand greens were a fun challenge, the course was over good land and the clubhouse had cheap beers and a full-size billiards table!

More tricky than putting the sand greens, I found, was approaching. If you flew the ball on it bounced hard over the back, but too many bounces short robbed the ball of the momentum it needed to roll on the oiled sand.

[Bill_McBride]

I have never played on sand greens, but my cousin Tommy learned to play outside Cairo on then.  His knickname was "Motorboat.".  Putt Putt Putt.

[Tom_Doak]

I played on sand greens -- with hickory clubs borrowed from a friend! -- in Nebraska a few years back.  The course was at Dannebrog, a small town about a half hour from Grand Island.  Maybe JK should stop THERE en route to Dismal sometime.

[Phil McDade]

Some good links:

http://puttingzone.com/sandgreens.html

http://www.pasturegolf.com/courses/sandgreens.htm

http://www.northdakotapreps.com/viewtopic.php?f=68&t=6203 (a listing of those in North Dakota)

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/web/COM1158502/index.htm (on Nebraska's heritage of sand-green courses)

[Ron Farris]

SPRINGVIEW, NEBRASKA:  As a kid we used to play in a golf tournament on sand greens at Springview, Nebraska.  This was always great fun and the greens all had a berm around them to keep the sand from blowing out in the winter months and to give hazard to the place so people would not be able to use the ground game......Go Figure. 

AINSWORTH, NE - My dad was hired to grow-in the new greens at the Ainsworth municipal golf club.

THEDFORD, NE - At the airport, or at least I think it was there, there is a little course

MULLEN GOLF CLUB: Again, as a kid we would go visit our Uncle Ernie Leach, who was a staple of the Mullen golf scene.  RIP Earnest!  Nobody loved the game as much as this guy.

MURDO GOLF CLUB:  Murdo, SD.  9 hole course located off I-90.   No longer in existence.  Changed to grass about 10 years ago.

OUR NEIGHBOR'S PASTURE:  My first golfing experience was in our neighbor's pasture in the Sand Hills of Nebraska.  My brother and I would set up little 9 hole courses.  Technically not sand greens, we just dug holes in the ground and put a stick or something in the hole and played to it.  I was 11 and 12 years old during that time.  We often had to keep an eye out for the neighbor's prize bulls.

[Pete Balzer]

Mt. Meadows- in Red Feather Lakes Colorado, about 45 minutes west of Ft Collins. Green Fees $5, fees are collected at the general store

[Scott Sander]

To anyone in interested in a metropolitan-area look at the species: in Indianapolis, there is a set of tiny sand greens on the smallest golf course you'll ever see.

"Rustic Gardens" is an ODG-era miniature golf course. 
It's tough to describe.  It's not putt-putt.  Nor is it golf.
Think of it as a grass-and-sand course where no shot is longer than a hard chip.  You're only issued a putter at the counter, but you'll see all manner of clubs out there.

A Google image search yielded virtually nothing useful, but then I found this: 
http://www.basesproduced.com/2008trip/Day8.html

I have no idea who those people are, but they took a couple of nice pictures, and I hope they don't mind the link.

[Dan Kelly]

I played on sand greens -- with hickory clubs borrowed from a friend! -- in Nebraska a few years back.  The course was at Dannebrog, a small town about a half hour from Grand Island.  Maybe JK should stop THERE en route to Dismal sometime.

This was one of my all-time-favorite GCA.com posts -- from Dick Daley: http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=811392dc15979b37e06881ee3d3bef9b&topic=11883.msg195921#msg195921.

What happened to the wonderful pictures?

And speaking of wonderful pictures: This, considerably more recent thread is apropos, too: http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,51855.0.html.

[Matt Ingraham]

I had a friend in college from a little town in Kansas and his high school golf team won a state championship in the sand greens division.  Prior to going to school in Kansas I had never heard of such a thing, nor had I heard of eight man football. Sand green golf was fun and different to play. 

I was actually talking to a buddy a few weeks ago how it would be neat if one of the prairie golf clubs would build a little nine hole sand green course on their property.  A little carry bag with five clubs and a cooler of beer and playing until sunset would be great way to end a day of golfing.   

[Mark McKeever]

The practice area I used growing up behind the barn at my parents house had a green made of dirt and sand.  Does that count?   

Mark

[Andy Stamm]

To anyone in interested in a metropolitan-area look at the species: in Indianapolis, there is a set of tiny sand greens on the smallest golf course you'll ever see.

"Rustic Gardens" is an ODG-era miniature golf course. 
It's tough to describe.  It's not putt-putt.  Nor is it golf.
Think of it as a grass-and-sand course where no shot is longer than a hard chip.  You're only issued a putter at the counter, but you'll see all manner of clubs out there.

Rustic Gardens was what immediately came to mind for me. When I played there as a kid, the (metal) cup lips were above the sand on some holes meaning that if the putt wasn't center cut and FIRM, it was rejected. Great place for small wagering for sure.

There is a sand green at the Tufts Archive in Pinehurst, but it's in disrepair. I though it was very cool when I first saw it because of the history of those greens in that area, but upon closer inspection it was quite neglected and not of much interest. Great photos of those square oiled sand greens in the Archive though.

[Guy Nicholson]

I learned to play on sand greens at Ojibway GCC in Sioux Lookout, Ont. (As always in northern Ontario, GCC stands for Golf and Curling Club.)

They were small, flat, oiled ovals that absolutely required the ground game for everything but the nearest chip. Putting required heavy metal rollers that etiquette demanded be dragged from the hole to a spot directly beside your ball. You would then move the ball onto the smooth surface. Afterward, the roller would be placed at the back of the green, out of play.

The club finally got grass surfaces in the early 1990s, I think, and even though they were much better, I still have a bit of nostalgia for those sand greens because the experience was so unique. (A couple of hundred kilometres down the highway at Ignace was a golf course that used artificial turf greens for a couple of years. Even unique didn't redeem that.)

[RJ_Daley]

Dan, here is one photo I found on my photobucket jumble of unorganized pics.   One can see the loving care that the Dannebrog owners and caretakers apply to their little gem of a course out on the prairie.  Also, seen in the distance is the unique par 3 where the green is inside the cut off watering tank, and requires special rules for pitching the ball that doesn't actually land within the tank.  I do hope those lovely people are still enjoying their life on the prairie, and their caretaking of their golf course. 

[RJ_Daley]

Perhaps topical and interesting enough with all the talk of the oil sludge pipeline that they are fighting over in the Sand Hills and subject of political debates, is that back 10 or more years ago when I was there at Dannebrog, these NE sand green courses had already been forced to convert to some sort of harmless vegetable oil sludge rather than petroleum products to oil the sand.  If the smallish amounts of petroleum oil was a ground water concern over the great high plains aquafir, a full blown pipeline blow out seems rather worrisome. 

[Ken Moum]

I had a friend in college from a little town in Kansas and his high school golf team won a state championship in the sand greens division.  Prior to going to school in Kansas I had never heard of such a thing, nor had I heard of eight man football. Sand green golf was fun and different to play. 

I was actually talking to a buddy a few weeks ago how it would be neat if one of the prairie golf clubs would build a little nine hole sand green course on their property.  A little carry bag with five clubs and a cooler of beer and playing until sunset would be great way to end a day of golfing.   

I was looking online at the beginning of this thread, and the 2012  Sand Green High School State Championship here in Kansas is being contested at Mankato Country Club. http://www.usd107.org/documents/High%20School/Golf/State%20Sand%20Green%20Golf%202012.pdf

You'll find MCC in the middle of this frame  http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=39.793874,-98.229444&z=15&t=h&hl=en

Looks like they are going to have a tree problem down the road... 

[Joe Fairey]

Have not played them, but my first golf experiences were in my
hometown in very rural SC....walking along with my Dad
and Grandfather...I was probably 5 or 6 years old...

Calhoun Golf Course...aka.. "the cow pasture"...truly
a cow pasture with barbed wire fences to keep the cows away
from the sand greens.....when I played Brora several years back.
...it brought back distant but fond memories...

...the only (water)hazard was a 'hog wallow'...which was a
 'shallow depression with no  vegetation
 and very 'muddy'....created by the wallowing of hogs...

and sand greens....very small as I can remember...and a mat
present at each green to drag the surface for the next group....

I drive by 'the cow pasture' all the time....the ninth green sat
right next to a huge oak tree near the highway....some 50 years
later, the tree remains with a pasture full of cows.

[Matt Day]

play plenty of these in country areas of Western Australia, they generally use an oil/sand mix. There is an artform to the scrape, you only get one go and the locals watch you like a hawk

One of my favourites is Augusta Golf Club, down in the south west. A stunning site with sand greens, unfortunately the web page doesn't have a lot of photos.

http://www.augustagolfclub.org.au/visitors.htm

[Pat Burke]

Played sand greens in a tour event once!
Got fined when I was quoted saying I had to switch to marking balls with a quarter
instead of a penny.  The penny blended in with the dirt