The second hole at Dismal River’s Tom Doak course in Mullen, Neb.
Prairie Dunes Golf Club in Hutchinson, Kan.
of Sand Hills (but 27 miles by car—go figure). There, an initial upscale residential property built around a Jack Nicklaus-designed layout failed miserably. But now, it’s been reborn from the ground up, thanks to a commitment by new owner Chris Johnston to emphasize a kind of “frat house on the prairie” approach that welcomes members, their guests and serious archi- tecture aficionados to a more playable version of the original Nicklaus course, now sitting next to a brand- new Tom Doak design. The attraction there is two earthy golf courses and the kind of welcoming, locally-em- bedded culture that makes
adventurous golfers feel like they have a home out on the frontier.
The ease of travel today, coupled with the consumer preferences of top-tier earners, has opened up a few areas to golf develop- ment once thought beyond the pale or unsustainable. Fifty years ago, when Desert Forest Golf Club broke new ground in the town of Carefree (20 miles north of then-downtown Scottsdale), most Arizonans thought the developers were crazy. Actu- ally, they were, and it took several decades of financial high-wire balancing before the club and the town would find firm ground. Now, all of upper Scottsdale is so well established for golf and real estate that other, far more re- mote areas of the American West have started to develop critical mass. Among them, the Tahoe-Truckee area along the California-Nevada border, Coeur d’Alene in northern Idaho, and Jackson Hole, Wyo. It took Prairie Dunes Golf Club in Hutchinson, Kan., at least three decades after it opened in 1936 to gain a national following. Today, thanks to journal- ism, social media and private charter plane travel, seem- ingly remote outposts of
The 5th green at Bandon Dunes
the game can quickly gain a loyal base. The real issue is whether that group of devotees will be enough to sustain the course. Chang- ing patterns of club use suggest that many golfers who might have thought four or five memberships a reasonable indulgence are no longer willing to collect bag tags as badges of honor. The new economics of golf sug- gest golfers showing more loyalty to their home course. Maybe there are enough golfers out there to sustain exotic destinations. But the marketing costs of attract-
ing a golfer once to your outpost are considerable. It’s a basic rule of business: it’s more efficient to draw repeat customers than new ones. The anecdotal evidence suggests that the seriously itinerant golfer is a small niche of the golf market. But they are also intense in their devotion to exploring the next great adventurous destination. One thing is for sure. That “Field of Dreams” thing is not a model of de- velopment. Build it and they will come? Only if they can find it, and only if they think it worthwhile to return.
BRADLEY S. KLEIN is the longtime architecture editor of Golfweek. His latest book is “Wide Open Fairways” (2013).
FALL 2013 /
NCGA.ORG / 33
PHOTO: USGA
PHOTO: WOOD SABOLD
PHOTO: LARRY LAMBRECHT
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