Top 10 Destination in the US... you guys have absolutely lost it!!! Both Wild Horse, an ideal public facility and Sand Hills are far superior, plus the new course in Mullen will knock it down another peg.
First... lets hit those fast and firm conditions that were mentioned on page 1... NO CHANCE... Yes the greens are fast, when I was there about 1.5 months ago, the greens were at 12, but the rest of the course is Low Mow Bluegrass and it is super lush. This combo makes for extremely difficult to play anything running into the greens. Oh and the mow stripes... yuck!
Second... Both courses suffer from an extreme case of being over shaped. There is not one place on either of the 18s where the word restraint comes to mind. The greens contours are enormous, wild and contrived. But the greens are better than the surrounds. The countless waves, bumps, and un-needed movement around the greens doesn't add any real interest, and certainly does not tie into the landscape.... The Pines (Marsh) course suffers more from this than the Dunes, but both caught the fever and couldn't control it.
Third... The width... Yes golfclubatlas goes gaga over width, but width for the sake of width is a bazar design choice and very expensive way to keep your guests/members from losing balls. Another thing the excessive width does is throw off the entire scale of the course. With 80-100 yard wide fairways in places you have to increase the size/number of bunkers and the greens in order to make things compositionally fit back together... Dont bother arguing that it provides any sort of strategic values, if you need 100 yards of width to provide multiple lines to certain pins, there is something wrong with the greens.
Fourth... There are zero world class holes between the 36. The best holes on the property are found on the Horse Course! If I needed to pic out the 2 best holes from the big courses, they would be #2 and #7 on the Dunes course.
Fifth.. The bunkers. Give me a break! More so on the Pines than the Dunes, but come on, why are all those scabs, fingers, islands and the whopdy-doos (what i call the rounded shaping on the top faces) necessary? Have they not seen what blowouts in the sand hills actually look like? Have they never experienced the wind in Nebraska? These things are just gonna get pounded by wind and turn into absolute lunacy as they evolve into something totally different. Look what has happened at DR and Sanhills, the weather is just brutal on bunkers out here and with 100 yard wide fairways, the staff probably wont be spending a ton of time on the bunkers.
Lastly... I think the semi-private model is actually quite smart. In this area where it is hard to travel to multiple times per year for members, any additional revenue that can be generated by locals, the Omaha/Lincoln crowd or even a national source should be welcomed. I cannot imagine over crowding is ever a real issue. But to go along with that ball pyramids on the range, Prairie Club labels on the water bottles, having way to many staff, and things like that just add to the cost that will in the end turn people away.
I think Dunes course is rated pretty much where it should be on the golfweek modern list, right around 100, and the Pines course is clearly a step down from that... Both are very walkable, but not sure how that makes it a top 10 destination in the US!
I could have done an entire thread on the bunkers, but here are some pics that crack me up!
Wait for this one get even deeper via wind erosion!
Lots of Whoopdy-Do's on #3 of the pines.
