UNBEATABLE BA DO
N N
about building a putting course out- side the Pacifi c Dunes patio. He simply told them, “Make it
really fun.” Doak and Urbina constructed the
grandest, wildest putting green in existence, 100,000 square feet of pure madness traversing 20 feet of eleva- tion, screaming over hills and humps and hummocks, banking off valleys and volcanoes, wandering down stairs and slides. “Our goal was to build a stand-
alone facility that would be just as fun to play as any of the big courses, but on a smaller scale,” Doak explained. “You will fi nd every kind of putt you can imagine out there, and probably a few you’ve never dreamed of. ” The Punchbowl is reset with a
new 18-hole routing each day around noon. But we found it much more fun to spice up the holes, design dogleg par 4 putts and concoct cross- country miniature golf expeditions when play died down, and the entire Punchbowl was our playground— complete with whooping and holler- ing and childish cheer. “We need more of these things in
golf,” said Urbina on Opening Day last year. “If the social experience of the game has gone missing, it’s here. There’s smack talk, challenging, bet- ting and good fun.” Amen. Thanks be to Bandon.
+ Bally Bandon
Sheep Ranch In 2003, Sports Illustrated ran
an expose on this secret course at Bandon Dunes, dubbing the mysterious links “Project X.” Sports Illustrated speculated, hypothesized and feared that “public golf messiah” Keiser and fellow business associ- ate Phil Friedmann were building a private course on land even more spectacular than Pacifi c Dunes and Bandon Dunes. Blasphemy! Ever since gobbling up that story,
I’ve daydreamed about the land jut- ting into the Pacifi c just north of Old
34 /
NCGA.ORG / FALL 2015
The iconic 16th hole at Bandon Dunes is a tempting daredevil drivable par 4 in the right conditions.
Macdonald called Five Mile Point. Through a distorted game of tele- phone (Bandon does have spotty cell reception) and hearsay, I had pieced together that it was possible to book a reservation and play this create-a- course with 13 greens and no routing, a grand Doak experiment. Do it. Bally Bandon Sheep Ranch
is golf ’s greatest adventure. “It’s the furthest outside-the-box design of anything we’ve done,” Doak wrote. “The 105-acre oceanfront property has 13 greens and is de- signed so golfers can play cross-coun- try, choosing their own routing on the fl y. The task of designing holes, which could be played forward, backwards and sideways, was one of the most complicated projects we’ve taken on,
yet the result is simple fun in a mag- nifi cent setting.” The back-channeling reservation
process only adds to the mystique and urban legend quality of Bally Bandon. The course is not affi liated with the resort, so you must call a golf retailer in town, Bandon Golf Supply, and leave a message for Bally Bandon caretaker Greg Harless. If your desired date is available and approved, you must mail a check for $100 a player to a P.O. Box three weeks before your tee time—and hope Greg isn’t a Nigerian prince. We were given directions over the
phone, told to drive down bizarre and isolated streets like 7 Devils Road and Whiskey Run Road, and asked to meet Greg in his pickup truck outside a park-
PHOTO: WOOD SABOLD
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