When you spend 21.5 consecutive hours on three plane flights to get somewhere, you expect to be rewarded for your effort.
The best Wichita offered was a kindly innkeeper who answered the age-old question of what Newt Gingrich would look like were he morbidly obese and an amusing 13-year-old Eminem clone who was intent on fighting me to impress his girlfriend (though the Old Town area is beautiful and the microbrewery does a great IPA).
But an hour north, Prairie Dunes really is something special.
Not many golf courses are genuinely unique, but Prairie Dunes unquestionably is. The dunes are heaving and the land wonderfully rippled, but it's certainly not a links. The gunch is unlike anything else I have seen, a native and unkempt combination of thick grasses and heathland-esque small plants as well as Yucca (which I soon discovered I am allergic to).
The greens are maybe the best set I have encountered - bold internal contours that tie in perfectly to the strategy of the holes, and as draped on the ground as you could wish for.
Above all, it possesses a lengthy list of outstanding and varied holes, a wonderful routing that makes expert use of the landforms and ever-present wind and a handful of the best greensites I have seen.
The greens at 1, 2, 6, 8, 11, 12, 14, 17 and 18 contain all you could ever hope for in challenge and interest and one of the very best features of the set sits front and centre of the 11th green: Press Maxwell's Knob.
Press's Knob isn't so big as to stand out from a distance, but whether approaching the green in two shots (likely from 180-220 yards out) or three (laying up to within chipping/pitching distance) it must be considered.
The subtlety of the feature is echoed in many of my favourite Coore and Crenshaw greens, and I'd love to one day be able to ask them how influential this and perhaps other Maxwell green features were in shaping their approach to building greens. Their greens in many instances remind me of Prairie Dunes, which is as great a compliment as I can offer.
Some pictures of Press's Knob, starting about 130 out and moving closer and then to the right. As you imagine different pins and approach angles/distances, it's easy to see how influential it is in the hole.
I was lucky over two 36-hole days to have the pin you see in these pics as well as a back right pin, which gave me a couple of distinct ideas of how the knob comes into play -- knocking balls off line, kicking the ball forward when you want it to stop and stopping the ball when you want it to run.
On a course armed with dozens of great features, this is definitely one of the very best.