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Dream Golf, the company that owns Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon and Sand Valley Golf Resort in Wisconsin, announced that its third American golf resort is now under construction.
Rodeo Dunes will be located 50 miles northeast of Denver, Colo. - 42 miles from Denver International Airport - on 2,000 acres of pure sand. From the heaving dunes that grace the property, golfers will eventually be able to glimpse the Front Range mountains some 125 miles west.
Construction is set to begin this summer on the resort's first two 18-hole courses, with a short course and putting course expected to follow in short order. Per Dream Golf, the land can support as many as six golf courses.
The first golf course will be laid out by Bill Coore & Ben Crenshaw, who have been longtime collaborators with Dream Golf founder Mike Keiser. In 2005, Coore & Crenshaw laid out Bandon Trails, the third course at Keiser's Bandon Dunes Golf Resort. And when Keiser's sons, Michael and Chris, began developing Sand Valley Golf Resort in central Wisconsin, they tapped Coore & Crenshaw to design its first golf course.
The second course at Rodeo Dunes will serve as the solo design debut of Jim Craig, who has shaped and managed the construction of several Coore & Crenshaw courses over the years, including Hidden Creek Golf Club in southern New Jersey, Old Sandwich Golf Club in Massachusetts and the new course at McArthur Golf Club in Hobe Sound, Fla.
A resident of Fort Worth, Texas, Craig has also worked with Coore & Crenshaw at several Dream Golf courses, taking a particularly major role in creating the 17-hole Sandbox short course at Sand Valley. The Sandbox features some particularly exciting and quirky features, including a hellish pot bunker in front of the course's final green. Whereas Coore & Crenshaw courses hew toward mellower, classic interpretations of the land on which they sit, Craig's work at The Sandbox might provide some hint as to the way his Rodeo Dunes course might diverge from that of his mentors.
Dream Golf building new courses in all three American locations
Dream Golf is as busy as ever, their resorts in high demand among traveling golfers. In addition to the work about to commence at Rodeo Dunes in Colorado, the company is overseeing construction of new courses at Bandon Dunes and Sand Valley as well.
At Bandon Dunes, Dream Golf recently announced the construction of a new, 19-hole par-3 golf course to be laid out by the firm of Whitman, Axland and Cutten (WAC). A longtime Coore & Crenshaw associate himself, before embarking on his own career, Whitman laid out the first golf course at Cabot Links in Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, which is also part of the Dream Golf portfolio.
New golf is also coming out of the ground at Sand Valley Golf Resort. In addition to The Lido, a private club adjacent to the resort that is a near-exact replica of a lost, legendary C.B. Macdonald design in New York, Tom Doak is building Sedge Valley, which will be the resort's third course, following on the success of the Coore & Crenshaw original and the David McLay Kidd-designed Mammoth Dunes, which opened in 2016. Sedge Valley will be a somewhat more intimate affair, inspired by British heathland layouts like Swinley Forest Golf Club, a Harry Colt masterpiece that tops out at around 6,100 yards with a par of 68.
Have you stayed and played golf at any of Dream Golf's properties? Let us know your thoughts on their newest golf resort project.
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Comments (1)
you have to be an idiot to spend that much money to play goof at these places, why? you jest beatying your silly little ball around, does it matter if you spend $30 instead of hundreds