Old Macdonald

When I first played Old Mac a decade ago, I'll admit that I despised it. A second time has brought a new appreciation. It's good fun, although not at the level of the other Bandon courses. It's the only Bandon course I'm giving four stars. Its biggest scarlet letter is the 16th hole, a 455-yard brute where nobody makes par. You might as well add another tee 20 yards back and call it a risk-reward par 5, where only the longest hitters attempt to take on the massive dune guarding a blind green. The rest of us mortals can layup to the right side of the green/fairway like we do currently, and try to get up and down for a decent score.

Not my type of course. Hard fairways. Rock hard greens and blind holes. Played it twice but could probably be played with just a putter and driver. You can putt from 60 yards off the green on most holes. Even the caddies had problems reading the greens as they were very hard, inconsistent and in generally poor condition.

I loved Old Mac alot. It is a great course to play early in the morning as the sun is rising. You get some great pictures of the Ghost Tree on hole 3.

The course is awesome and maybe the toughest walk but it doesnt appear that way looking at from Pac Dunes. Hole 3 is awesome is the ghost tree, hole 4 is a super tough hole with a difficult green but if you just dunk it from 150 out for a 2 it makes it alot easier. 5 is a short par 3 with a crazy 3 tier green. 7 is a great spot on property looking out into the Pacific.

Back nine is great too 11 is a an ode to the road hole at St A's. And 16, 17 and 18 are just a great finishing stretch where you could make birdies in the right spot or doubles if slightly out of position.

I was a big fan of old mac definitely a morning course so you can avoid the wind. Great to pair it with Bandon Trails in the afternoon.

For this course to not be rated 5 stars across the board is just ignorance. What it lacks in oceanside holes it more than makes up for with some of the best holes on property. I rate Old Mac 3rd of the courses on Property and it's a razor thin margin between 3rd and first. This course has some of the most interesting and strategic holes you will ever play anywhere. My favorites are the 16th the Alps hole, the 4th Hogs back a brutal par 4 but very cool driving strategy, the wildest green on property the Short #5. Definitely a course you will want to play more than once in order to figure it out but if have an open mind it is crazy fun. Even though the terrain is completely different it reminds me a little bit of Tobacco Road with the big crazy greens and some of the elevation changes. Old Mac gets overlooked due to not having the ocean views of PD, BD or SR but don't sleep on it. It may be the most fun to play of all of them.

Old Macdonald is a treat, like no other course I have played, and I want to return. After opening with a straightforward par 4 and a tricky par 3, Old Mac opens the gates to a golf valley of wonder beyond the Ghost Tree. Your tee shot on the signature third hole will probably be fine as long as you keep it right of the gigantic dead tree on top of the hill. This is the only aiming point as the tee shot is totally blind. After making your way up the large hill to find your ball in the largest fairway ever, you will experience a test of links golf like none other in the USA.

Holes 3-15 are routed in an expansive valley with lots of challenging holes, harrowing bunkers, elevation changes, and some treacherous par 3s. You will also have to deal with a strong sustained wind throughout the round as the Pacific Ocean is just a few hundred yards away, have fun out there.

A day at Old Mac requires a good ground game as you will probably want to keep the ball low. There is a lot of trimmed grass out there, so fairways can be easy to find, but look out for the bunkers. They are deep and have tall faces, so you will probably end up just bailing out if you find yourself in the fairway variety of sand. Conditions are fast and firm. The par 3 8th has what appears to be two entirely different greens with a huge trench dividing them, although it is all one surface, and your tee shot on the Redan 12th better be pure or you will not hold the green, ending up at the bottom of the plateau. (I had 3 chips to make it up)

With all of its difficulty, there are some scoring chances on this track with a couple of drivable par 4s, and the par 5s are definitely gettable. I found every hole on this course to be interesting and offering a different test to the golfer. It was a blast to be out on the course, I just wish I played it twice and changed my strategy on several of the holes.

The greens at Old Mac are huge, the fairways expansive, and the scoring chances are there! I loved the final 3 holes with a blind second on 16, a great par 5 17th, and 18, a par 4 with a hill blocking the green, is my favorite closing hole out of the 5 courses at Bandon Dunes. I could not ask more out of this course as the day at Old Macdonald was spectacular, just wish I could have put the ball in the right spots more often.

This was the last round on my Bandon trip and I was pleasantly impressed with Old Mac. The course is very forgiving off the tee but that may be on only forgiving this about the course. The greens are very hilly and cause lots of 3 puts. We had great weather but I couldn't imagine playing these tough greens in worse conditions!

2nd trip to Bandon 1 st round on old Mac. Impressed. Great experience every die hard should do. Only beef is the cost, you have to save to go there.

I played this to see if I'd enjoy the Scottish links-style of golf and I think afterward, I can safely say, I am an American.

The course is fun, challenging and hard, but the biggest difficulties come in terms of length, with the solid wind in your face, par fours play like par fives, and the greens resemble hard oak as opposed to greens.

It is an experience and to break 90 from the green tees, I felt very good. I would not view this as a leisure course and I feel you NEED A CADDY for this course.

What a fun course! This course is stellar, and has such unique holes unlike what we normally play in the U.S.

Nice and forgiving off the tee, the rest is all challenging. Take a caddie! Tyler was my awesome caddie, who even convinced me to putt out of a bunker to a super-nasty pin placement (it was the right play and was able to stay on the green).

Combine the layout along w/ top notch service and Old Mac is amazing!

This course played a tiny bit easier for me than the other Bandon properties. The greens are larger and the fairways are generous. That is not to say this is not a test. Old Macdonald has some of the harder holes at Bandon. Enjoy, but do bring a caddy.

Old Macdonald seems to be a polarizing golf course. I'm here to say don't skip it on your Bandon Trip. It now stands firmly at the top of my list of favorites. It's the most fun I've ever had on a golf course.

There's something for every player. The fairways are easy to hit and the greens are huge, but being in the right position is important if you want to score well. Your ball runs forever (sometimes into well placed sand traps) and the ground game is more significant here than on the other Bandon courses. The undulations in the greens are dramatic and forced some exciting putts that you've most likely never had to attempt before.

For architecture buffs, there's an added bonus of playing holes you've always dreamt about. The routing puts these holes together in spectacular fashion. The blind shots and hidden traps put excitement into every shot.

The constant crescendo and decrescendo of views and landscape never ceases to amaze. There's always something new to catch your eye, even with the ghost tree lurking the entire round, even after you've conquered it. This is the purest golf experience I've ever had. All you can see around you is the pacific, sand, gorse, and golf.

Cannot believe this course is not rated higher. Only has a few ocean views but is one of the most playable, challenging, picturesque courses I’ve ever seen. Links golf at it’s finest.

Decided to try Old MAC as a replay round. Had great weather (can only imagine playing when it’s rainy/windy). Took me a few holes to figure out that the greens since they have bigger slopes were a bit slower speed wise than the other courses. The front 9 had some interesting holes - #3 is an interesting hole tee to green. #5 has a massive green and the best spot on the course is the 7th green/8th tee. Great views of the ocean. Back 9 was bear, almost every hole played uphill it felt. Played on its own it’s not a bad course but in comparison to the other courses it falls short. I’m glad I played it but it’s not at the top of the list to play again.

Jast another of the wonderful, wonderful Bandon courses on this marvelous rota. This one has blind shots where the caddy's knowledge pays off on aim points over dunes to shielded greens. Reminded me of New South Wales in Australia.

Seriously, charging this much money to hit a golf ball in 18 cow pastures just doesn't make any sense.

Here's an idea, plant some trees and think about leveling out the fairways. No idea why you'd have a course with uneven lies all over the place, no trees whatsoever, and you can't even take carts on it. I'm a +1 and yet I couldn't break 102 on this course. That proves the place is garbage.

Old Mac wasn't kind to me in any way. The course had water on certain greens and fairways as a result of the wettest, coldest winter in decades on the Oregon coast. The sub-50-degree day I played it, stinging hail pelted my group.

Needless to say, I didn't play well and get a good feel for what could be an interesting course. Walking off with at least eight three-putts, I thought 'How anyone could enjoy such a punishing putting test on huge greens'?

That said, there are other subtleties to appreciate - the blind tee shot near the 'ghost tree' on no. 3 and the biarritz green on the downhill par-3 fifth hole. Old Mac will never be my favorite at Bandon Dunes, but maybe a second helping will give me a better understanding of its merits and help me overlook its weaknesses.

Love it, like it, hate it, loathe it, or just skip it!!!!!

Old Mac is a great conversation piece because it is so divisive among people who have played it. Its the one course that is going to have friends arguing all the way home about where it ranks on the list of "Bandons Best".

On my personal 8 man buddies trip 3 guys had it as their favorite, 1 guy had it at 3rd, 3 guys had it 4th and the other guy hated it so much he had it 7th behind Shortys, The Punchbowl and The Preserve. HE REALLY HATES OLD MAC, granted he shot 91 and is 5 handicap.

I by no means have a love affair with Old Mac, but it offers a totally different experience compared to the other courses at Bandon. Giving credit where it is due, the goal of Old Mac is to pay homage to CB Macdonald and the heritage of the game of golf in the United States, and in that regard it exceeds at the highest of levels. Shots and greens, and visuals, and lines have the most distinct feel of Scotland that CB tried to bring to the American game, and with Old Mac they expand on that dream.

Saying that, where I think I fall out of love with Old Mac is that in an effort to make the course "fun" and "more playable", which I totally understand as Bandon is a resort, they have set the course up to be beaten by a player who only needs to be able to hit 2 or 3 types of shots all round to post a good score. It doesnt particularly pressure any parts of your game, and I feel like I hit the same drawing driver tee shot 10 times.

Is it unique, with some of the craziest greens you will ever see? You bet!! Would I ever skip it?? Not a chance. Is it number 4 and holding on my personal favorite list? Yep.

Old Macdonald is the newest and, to be blunt, the least appealing option for golf enthusiasts visiting Bandon Dunes. It's not that it's a terrible golf course -- far from it. But there are too many odd design aspects that bump Old Mac, though visually dramatic, down to fourth on my personal list. Let's start with the greens. They're massive -- one of our caddies said they're the largest green surfaces in North America. I believe it. You could conceivably hit all 18 greens and four- (or five-) putt all of them. They're that big. But honestly, I don't really mind that. It rewards good ball-striking and distance control. My biggest issue was that there were nine good holes and nine ... well ... not-so-good holes. Too often, it seemed, there were brutally long par 4s with greens that not only were elevated but also had severe false fronts. I'm not a short hitter -- my average drive is probably 270 yards -- but with a little bit of wind, I was hitting driver-4 iron into several greens. Instead of having a playable putting surface to accept what are lower, less spinning shots, the greens here harshly rejected them. My playing partner wouldn't even bother going for some of the par-4 greens in two, knowing that he couldn't even come close. Frankly, it's too penal for the average golfer, especially when it's windy (which it is almost all the time). It just seemed like a missed opportunity, when the greens could have been designed to accept and funnel balls into pockets on the greens, rather than send them into tight lies well below the putting surface. Let me be clear, there are some awesome holes here -- the third, seventh, eighth, 13th and 14th all come to mind -- but you can find better golf options at Bandon.

This is what I wrote in a review three years ago. "I like it a lot, didn't love it though. I think if I played it again I'd grow to love it more. There were just several blind shots that I thought were forced and unnecessary. They were there for the sake of it. But it was another fun walk and it was the second round of a 36-hole day for me."

Agree, with all that, but I think I liked it less the second time around. Too many forced carries into ridiculously huge greens on holes that are already difficult. I don't mind a forced carry, but to continuously do it on difficult holes makes no sense. It's still a good place and worth playing if you have time, but I wouldn't leave one of the other three off before this one.

It's all weird too because a lot of people love Old Mac. In fact, I've heard some say it's one of their favorites there. I don't see that.

This is a real links with quirk and the largest green complexes on earth. Golf course architecture buffs will recognize a lot of the MacDonald-Raynor template holes here; however, they are not just duplications but unique takes on them. The Eden is here on hole #2, but you could actually putt the whole way-something Old Mac would frown upon. The menacing bunkers come into play with front hole locations. Go long and there is a bunker at the back waiting for you. The Redan is here, but the green is significantly longer than the original or any of MacDonalds'. Yet it is undeniably a redan; I think the 16th at Pac Dunes is a better one-not a complaint just an observation. Do avoid the bunker on the left, I saw some people chip backwards to get out after the direct approach was an exercise in futility. There is a great recreation of the hellacious bunker at St. Andrews or the Cardinal bunker from Prestwick on the 6th which is a par 5" long hole". The 16th is a very long Alps hole, but if your drive is long enough the approach is neither blind nor need go over the hill. The 8th is a Biarritz. Some of the best holes are not template-the par 4 7th comes to mind as does the par 4 14th as well as the par 5s other than the 6th. The best green might be the par 3 5th; at least, if you miss the proper section watch the roller coaster putt. The blind drive on the 3rd hole is a joy and if you hit the left side, your ball might roll all the way down to the green.
The greens are massive-larger than St. Andrews. Hitting the proper club and proper section is vital. Considering the ground game options, use the contours. The routing is unique as the first nine has 3 par 3s and 1 par 5. The second nine has 1 par 3 and 2 par 5s and many par 4s-it is 500 to 800 yards longer than the front all depending on your tee choice. Most of the holes are in a great valley that opens after you walk up the hill on the 3rd hole. The views of the ocean happen on the 7th and 15th greens, but views of the course in all its splendor happen on top of the 3rd and 14th.
Remember, you are playing a links course and this is a great one. If you are looking for American aerial golf and two nines with 2 par 3s and 2 par 5s on each side, then this is not for you. I am sure that this is not everyone's cup of tea, but if you like links golf or want a living cliff-notes on architecture, then you will enjoy Old Mac. Not my favorite here, but I do get in a round each time I am in town; it is a unique experience in the States.