I went to Sand Valley yesterday and heard a few tidbits:
1) The next thing built may be a punchbowl-like putting course/green similar to what they have at Bandon.
2) The architects mentioned to be in the running for the next course were Doak, DeVries and Hanse.
3) Quite a few other architects have visited the site and submitted proposals (on their own initiative).
4) Rooms are very booked-up from now into October.
5) Tee times are available, but not surprisingly, a little tight on the weekends. I didn't have any trouble booking a Tuesday afternoon tee time the day before I played.
I was lucky enough to sit next to Chris Kaiser last fall. I told him that I thought the site could accommodate a variety of course styles, including:
1) A course that pushed the edge and was a little wilder and more adventurous than what they have. I was thinking along the Kingsley and Greywalls line.
2) A Pinehurst-style course on a flatter section of the property. This could be really cool if they began to remove the "crop" pines and replace them with White Pines. White Pines were almost entirely removed from this part of the country during the logging boom. They are the tallest tree in the Eastern US. This would be a legacy project as the trees would not reach a significant height for many decades. There are some of these trees that are over 150 feet tall in a Michigan park. Pat Craig echoed this idea in an earlier post.
3) A really good 9 hole course on an interesting, but smaller slice of the property.
I really like Ian Andrew's idea of making a challenging, Pine Valley style course. He thinks through this idea out-loud on this terrific podcast with Derek Duncan:
http://feedtheball.com/2018/03/08/episode-14-ian-andrew/And after all, Sand Valley was envisioned as a cross between Sand Hills and Pine Valley.
It's fun to speculate on all of this. I'm confident that Sand Valley management will make some great decisions in the next few years.