Jekyll Island Golf Club - Great Dunes Course

Beautiful and challenging links course. Lots of character. Really fun track.

Approached my tee time with trepidation because of the reviews I’ve been reading on GolfNow. My advice: ignore the complaints. Does the course have some blemishes? Maybe, but they are part of the charm.

I have played the first iteration of Great Dunes and at that time it was 9 holes and in really poor shape. I have played both course at Jekyll Island they are fine courses. I think Great Dunes will be their best. It’s only been open since November but I really loved the layout, the incorporation of Great Dunes 1927, the Oleander course. In my opinion, Brian Ross got this right! I look forward to my next trip to Jekyll.

The course for how young it is within in great condition overall layout was great, hats off to the designer. Felt like we were in the UK. Will be a wonderful course in a year or two. Tea boxes were rock hard so it was hard to get the tee in the ground. So bring a hammer lol. Definitely worth going $130 price tag unless you book on GolfNow but it is well worth it. I had the most fun and felt like the 4 1/2 hours that we played felt more like seven hours somehow it was awesome.

A total let-down! This was supposed to be the "gem" of the Jekyll Island courses, but couldn't be further from the truth! I know that new courses sometimes "need time" to mature, but many of these are the same holes from the old Oleander Course as well as the 9 hole Dunes course, and the conditions were horrible! You needed a hammer to push the tee down in every box. The fairways had more dirt and sand than grass, the greens had more bumps and bare spots than the worst municipal courses out there. From the white tee boxes, there were par 4's over 425 yards! If that wasn't enough, there was also a par 3 at 227 yards!!! Not that they were un-doable for me, but darn! The people in the clubhouse checking you in were extremely rude and short and obviously had no idea what they were doing as there was a line about 10 long. With that price of the green fees, you still had to BUY a bucket of practice balls (in which you only got about 20 balls). Save your money and play elsewhere! This place is a joke!

Can't believe they get away with charging such a high green fee for a course like this! With it being newly renovated, I was expecting a lot more. The greens are horrendous, fairways don't even have much grass and minimal signage & direction to indicate where the next tee box is. I have played all the Jekyll courses many times and have never experienced anything like this before. For the price of the green fee, you think you'd get range balls included, but no!! You pay for a bucket and get maybe 18-20 balls and hit off a piece of junk tee area. I will NEVER go back here and there are so many other better courses off the island. I guess they think they can charge a ridiculous amount like this because it's on Jekyll, but it is complete junk.

The layout is cool and very attractive. Some fun holes. But the condition is like a Muni. Bare spots all over the fairways.

Greens horribly slow. For $135 I would go anywhere else.

Just re-opened Nov. 2025. The course conditions are immature in the fairways but greens are surprisingly good. Routing signs are poor, many groups were seen to riding around looking for the next hole.The layout is interesting and not unfair. Will be fun to play in 2 years.

One of the best courses I’ve ever played. Give it time to grow up when it comes to tee and fairways, but greens were in good shape and the layout was awesom.

As much time that has gone into remaking this course, it should be in much better shape. Tees were fair at best. Cart paths and tee boxes were not well marked or defined. Fairways were ragged, many grassless areas ON the fairways. Greens were huge and had parts that had large undulations. I was told their condition was the way they wanted because of the undulations - they were slow and bumpy, As much as they charge, the playing parts of the course should be in MUCH better shape. This has nothing to do with off season weather. Go play Sanctuary Club or Heritage Oaks where their greens are smooth and fast.

This newly re-designed and re-opened Jekyll Island classic has its best days in front of it!

Great Dunes was designed by Walter Travis in 1927, but faced significant erosion and damage over the years, leading to its reduction to nine holes. The recent multi-million-dollar restoration revived its original design and opened as a new 18-hole course in November 2025.

Play it now while tee times are relatively easy to secure. In 2 years the full restoration will take hold and this place will be a Top 5 in the Southeast, for sure!

Very fun and interesting layout, super helpful staff. Rare public dunes golf.

Layout of the course is good but the fairways are patchy and bare. Greens very hard and like the fairways need a healthy growing season to mature. Not worth the price at this time when you have 2 other courses on the property in better condition.

Paul P.

This course is in very rough shape. While the greens were decent, the fairways and tee boxes are awful, very rough and bare in many areas. The areas between holes look like a construction zone. No monitoring of pace of play. We had a 5 hr round, waited on every hole. Course has a long way to go.

Not worth your time or money IMO.

It cost ~$140 to play here so I expected it to be great quality. The greens were very lumpy and fairways have tons of bald spots in them. There are local courses in better condition for that price

Phenomenal restoration/renovation of the old Walter Travis Great Dunes course. Knowing the background of the project and the club, this was long over due. The routing and shaping of the course is amazing, exciting, different, exhilarating, thought provoking, and down right gorgeous. Being able to play something like this so close to the ocean for this price is a model that can easily be duplicated in every beach side town. The fact that people have the audacity to say anything negative about this course means they either have no concept of golf course design (which is an almost certainty) or that they have no concept of golf course maintenance (this seems to be the most common offense among recreational golfers) which points them to say things like, "the greens are too big and undulated", "the cart paths and tees are hard to see", "the old course was good enough", "the winter months and nonstop play during the season when grass can't grow makes the course look ugly so I don't think anyone should come here". Be gone. Don't come back. Leave this course to those who will genuinely appreciate it and return to your run of the mill, boring cookie cutter golf courses that leave nothing to the imagination and look like they were designed by a road grader.

The Great Dunes is for those who love golf. All others be gone.

One of my favorite course designs of all time! Also by far my new favorite semi-public course to play when i am on the coast. There are some areas in some fairways/greens that need to grow in, but by this spring/summer '26 i am sure it will be in PRIMO shape. Was really a treat!

Why sell 2 PM tee times and rush folks to finish by 5. Course is 126 per person is a joke. It’s new so I’ll give it a few more rounds. Until it’s matured play Pine Lakes!!

Have played all the Jekyll courses for many years, and they were some of my lifelong favorites. Hoped upon my return I could find the course changes enjoyable. However, This new merger of the 9 hole Great Dunes course and 9 holes from Oleander has ruined the Jekyll Island Golf experience. Yes Oleander had some seasonal wetness issues on several holes, it had been that way for years but always looked great. However they used this as an excuse in recent years. The problems here came from poor management & upkeep. In recent years you could find grass growing in the sand traps on all the courses and other easily solved issues as well. This new combines course has no flow to it. Course Conditions will improve with time however Its like playing 18 holes on 3 different designs… just plain weird. They are promoting the 4 hole and the roadside/seaside green as something special when in fact this green has been there for decades and nobody promoted it then. This combination was nothing more than a land grab so that much of Oleanders back 9 could be eventually used commercially by the Island authority. And the promotion of seaside golf is a ploy to justify the new doubled Rates! and it also eliminated affordable golf to the many who played the 9 hole Great Dunes course for years. The beautiful holes from Oleanders back nine were some of the prettiest holes you could find. i find it odd that they say the ‘water problem’ forced them to redesign and eliminate the back 9, yet they turn around and now use the #10 & #18 holes as a driving range. The monstrosity they have created with this new Great Dunes course is a complete joke of a golf course!