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Having built two of America's greatest golf resorts from scratch over 25 years, Dream Golf is set to make a huge leap soon.
Just 14 months after announcing the development of Rodeo Dunes 50 miles east of Denver, Colorado, the company that owns Bandon Dunes Golf Resort and Sand Valley Golf Resort is hard at work on Wild Spring Dunes, another brand-new golf resort and community being crafted near the town of Nacogdoches, Texas, located in a forested triangle of territory between Dallas, Houston and Shreveport (La.).
With two 18-hole golf courses planned for both initial buildouts at Rodeo Dunes and Wild Spring Dunes, golfers who have loved making the journey to remote southwestern Oregon and remote north-central Wisconsin will soon have two new locales to explore and enjoy.
Rodeo Dunes just announced it has broken ground on a Coore & Crenshaw course.
“This is the first site like this in America since Sand Hills,” notes Bill Coore on Instagram.
The simple genius of Dream Golf
With two world-class golf resorts up and running and two more in various stages of development - not to mention a host of others that have been heavily influenced by Keiser and his sons, Michael Jr. and Chris - it's not a stretch to say no one has had a greater impact on how, where and why golfers travel in recent decades.
A quote of Arnold Palmer's comes to mind when assessing Dream Golf's influence on the travel landscape:
"Golf is deceptively simple and endlessly complicated."
If you've traveled even a modest amount for golf, you've likely come away from certain courses thinking that the developers and architects compromised on the land in order to make way for resort buildings, homesites or other factors that interfere with the pure enjoyment of interesting golf holes. How many "ocean golf courses" feature maybe one or two token looks at the water before heading back inland? When golf feels like it's playing second-fiddle to other aspects of the experience, golfers notice.
From the beginning, Keiser and Dream Golf have prioritized quality course design ahead of all other factors when assembling far-flung places for avid golfers to gather. This sounds simple, but before the advent of Bandon Dunes, relatively few golf facilities built since World War II had centered golf courses so consciously. And to be fair, it's one thing to set out to build world-class golf courses. It's another to execute on that ambition as reliably as Dream Golf has.
When Keiser unveiled Bandon Dunes' original course, designed by then-twentysomething David McLay Kidd, in 1999, skeptics questioned whether golfers would be willing to travel to Oregon's remote southern coast. But once early adopters arrived and rhapsodized about a rough-and-tumble course that maximized both the oceanfront real estate and thrilled them with an experience similar to Scotland and Ireland's links without having to leave America, others were hooked.
Bandon Dunes No. 17
— Bandon Dunes (@BandonDunesGolf) July 10, 2024
Par-4, 389 yards pic.twitter.com/z4L6XFKk98
By engaging leading contemporary architects like Tom Doak (Pacific Dunes, Old Macdonald) and Bill Coore & Ben Crenshaw (Bandon Trails, Bandon Preserve, Sheep Ranch) to build more golf courses that refused to compromise or mar the world-class land they were given, Keiser created an irresistible pull on increasingly design-savvy golfers. Another aphorism comes to mind here: "If you build it, they will come." What Dream Golf has done better than any modern-day golf development concern has been to define and pursue the almighty "it" and never waver.
Yes, Bandon Dunes has back-filled enjoyable accommodations and other amenities, but the fact that everything else has flowed down from a focus on building world-class golf has always been its killer advantage.
The brand now known as Dream Golf wasn't truly born until the Keiser family built a second resort. When Sand Valley opened in 2015, it was again seen as risky, even in light of Bandon's success. The sense of remoteness well north of Wisconsin's capital of Madison was there, as was the commitment to quality golf, but the nearest ocean was more than a thousand miles away. Would golfers still come?
The answer has been a resounding "Yes," as the last decade has seen Sand Valley expand both physically and philosophically on Bandon Dunes. With vast expanses of sand under its thousands of acres, creating firm, fast, fun-as-heck golf, its lure is arguably as strong as Bandon's, especially considering its location within a few hours of major population centers like Chicago, Milwaukee and Minneapolis.
Sand Valley has introduced other elements to the Dream Golf mix, too. The biggest: real estate, which may have initially seemed incompatible with Keiser's vision of relatively undisturbed, hyper-concentrated golf. But the property's vastness (12,000 acres in total) and a low-density approach has enabled the family to generate significant income - multiple parcels of land meant to accommodate single-family homes have sold for well over $1 million - while sequestering most real estate well away from the core golf. In a country where the vast majority of golf community developers stack condos and homes in compact rows down the sides of hole corridors, Sand Valley is utterly different, and its steady stream of visitors means an ever-expanding pool of potential homeowners.
For its differences from its predecessor, Sand Valley still shares with Bandon Dunes a commitment to working with the leading golf architects of the day. Coore & Crenshaw (Sand Valley, The Sandbox), Doak (The Lido, Sedge Valley) and David McLay Kidd (Mammoth Dunes) have all contributed to the resort's golf product, with Jimmy Craig, a Coore & Crenshaw collaborator, breaking out on his own to lay out The Commons, a 12-hole course that will become Sand Valley's next new build and weave in some of the real estate component.
These developers and properties have been influenced by Mike Keiser and Dream Golf
Barnbougle Dunes - Bridport, Tasmania, Australia
Mike Keiser helped farmer Richard Sattler develop this spectacular resort, regarded as one of the Southern Hemisphere's best. Tom Doak laid out the original course with the help of Australian touring pro and architect Michael Clayton, while Bill Coore & Ben Crenshaw assembled the second, called Lost Farm. The property's 14-hole short course, Bougle Run, is a Bill Coore original.
Streamsong - Bowling Green, Fla.
Remote Central Florida's popular resort burst onto the American golf scene in 2012 with two intertwining Tom Doak (Blue) and Coore & Crenshaw (Red) courses. The Gil Hanse-designed Black Course and a Coore & Crenshaw short course have added to its destination appeal. The land's former status as a mine left hundreds of acres of sand for golf to be built upon.
Cabot - Canada, Saint Lucia, Florida, Scotland
Keiser has helped guide Cabot founder and CEO Ben Cowan-Dewar on a quest to develop his own suite of sweet golf destinations. Original developments in Nova Scotia, Saint Lucia and British Columbia (in development) plus acquisitions and overhauls in central Florida (Cabot Citrus Farms) and Scotland (the former Castle Stuart) have given Cabot impressive coverage.
Tara Iti and Te Arai Links - Mangawhai, New Zealand
American Developer Ric Kayne's super-private Tara Iti is regarded as one of Tom Doak's best works, and the general public now gets to enjoy a further original Doak and a Coore & Crenshaw course just down the coast at Te Arai North and Te Arai South, respectively.
Dream Golf's future: Rodeo Dunes and Wild Spring Dunes
From a golf perspective, both of Dream Golf's newest properties - Rodeo Dunes and Wild Spring Dunes - are in the same spirit as their predecessors.
Comprising 2,400 acres in total and officially announced at the end of May, Wild Spring Dunes may have the potential to be as big as Bandon Dunes eventually. In the meantime, its first two courses will be laid out by Tom Doak and Coore & Crenshaw. Founding membership shares of $65,000, with estimated annual dues of $7,600, have been made available to early adopters. Keiser has likened the terrain at Wild Spring Dunes to both Pinehurst and Pine Valley. Estimated opening dates for the property and its golf courses have not been provided yet.
Golf course construction is already underway at the more than 2,000-acre Rodeo Dunes site in Colorado, about an hour east of the Denver airport (DIA). The choppy hills and high sand dunes remind of the landscape that birthed the legendary Sand Hills Golf Club in Nebraska, which put Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw on the map as some of the greatest modern golf architects. The first course (of a potential six) will be a Coore & Crenshaw project, while Jimmy Craig listed as the architect of record for the second.
By granting Craig the reins to create original designs at Sand Valley and in Colorado, and by giving the same to the firm of (Rod) Whitman (David) Axland & (Keith) Cutten at Bandon's new Shorty's short course, Dream Golf is pushing back against the potential criticism that a fierce reliance on a small pool of architects might give their courses a sameness across properties, which could cause fatigue among their clientele and a yearning for something different. Golf's popularity has also pushed green fees ever higher; they peak at $450 at Bandon Dunes and $295 at Sand Valley nowadays. Even so, demand is such that both resorts' tee sheets are full.
Even if concerns about architectural similarities are valid (I don't personally buy them), the march of time will inevitably introduce more architects to the Dream Golf fold. The involvement of Craig and Whitman Axland Cutten suggest it's already happening. To the extent that golf continues to ride a post-COVID popularity wave and economic and social conditions cooperate, it looks as though the Dream Golf dream is only beginning.
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