Bally Bandon Sheep Ranch is a create-a-course with 13 greens and no routing, a grand [Tom] Doak experiment.
ing lot next to a locked gate—while hoping he wasn’t Bonnie or Clyde. Greg was thankfully waiting at
the generic gate, where someone had scratched “Bally Bandon” with a black sharpie in a size barely larger than this font. Greg greeted us with a warm smile, and shepherded us up a meandering gravel road cut through thick gorse—a colorful minute-long drive—to the first tee. The end of the Yellow Gorse
Road unveiled a Narnia-like world of wonderment. We owned this 13-green, infinite-hole course for the next three hours, until we would begrudgingly have to share it with another five-some due in the afternoon. We were welcome to stay and play as long as we wished. Greg projected we could devise a
mile-long par 10 from one end of the property to the other—although I think it would be closer to a par 12. The rough is mowed roughly
once a year, just before Bally Bandon reopens. (It’s closed for the summer because the course’s only source for irrigation is a vintage fire truck.) The greens still run nice and smooth, in line with the speeds of the resort courses. We were handed an insipid
scorecard produced from a Xerox. The cover was simply the name of the course in all caps, and a P.O. Box ad- dress. The inside included a diagram of the 13 greens, and labeled them A through M. The scorecard somehow produced 18 holes with a par of 70 and a yardage of 6,499 yards, but honestly, I stuck the card in my back pocket and never referenced it again. Everyone tees off through the
same chute of gorse on the first hole—but that’s where the similari- ties end, and this unfettered, unspoiled and uninhibited version of golf begins. The most tremendous thrill Doak
delivers is the exhilaration of search- ing for new holes. He unleashes your inner architect, and that’s all by design. He helps you walk away be-
FALL 2015 /
NCGA.ORG / 35
lieving you uncovered a better course than what he mocked up. Sometimes we’d scout out a poten- tial hole with a laser; other times we’d launch a drive and anxiously watch as we blindly attempted to bite off a chunk of a cape hole over a gorse- lined cliff we had just created. (And sometimes the laser was useless—the first reading would be 274, the second would be 504—and our eyes couldn’t decipher the difference on the naked linksland.) Sometimes we’d know we had the scent of a hole by discovering a smat- tering of broken tees to the side of a green. Other times, we’d revel in the opportunity to choose the hole less traveled. Six of the 13 greens flirt with the
coastline, and each time we stumbled across one, the moment of discovery was Columbus-like. I’ve never felt so much enthusiasm, vigor and genuine excitement exploring a course. The next hole always had the
possibility of becoming the best we’ve ever played. We were consumed with figuring out how to top each inven- tion, and unburdened by scores and playing expectations.
I’ll never forget the moment I
curiously climbed this cool shaved backstop of a green we just played. My eyes grew bigger than golf balls when I discovered a potential teeing ground to an oasis of a green over a churning cove that was tucked behind an island of gorse and a tangled mess of gnarly yet eye-catching snags. This green also happens to create
the western-most hole in the conti- nental United States. We spent much of the rest of our day fantasizing and obsessing over how we could repur- pose our favorite green. Our routing promptly spiraled into a hypnotic swirling heart, as we evolved from budding course architects to generals planning new angles of attack—from the sea, through trees, over an im- provised Alps hill. (A hat-tip to Old Macdonald for building my golf archi- tecture glossary.) We played a fun skins game—Bally
Bandon is the quintessential gambling/ gaming course—but the ultimate en- tertainment was unwrapping the purest golf experience I’ve ever encountered. And doesn’t that sum up just
about everything that Bandon has to offer?
The secret “E” green at Bally Bandon Sheep Ranch creates the western-most hole in the continental United States.
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