Sand Hills

How's that for an understatement? That is the Sand Hills Golf Club sign post in the above top picture. At mile marker 55 on NE97 10 miles outside Mullen, Nebraska, sits this humble yet handsome little wood sign. Only the chosen and the fortunate few know what magic lies ahead. A hint. Look at bottom top picture. Golfing nirvana awaits for the appreciative.

Sand Hills Golf Club is ranked in the top 5 of any poll you will ever read in this country. In the world, Sand Hills ranking is just as impressive. It's in tall cotton with the likes of: Cypress Point, Pine Valley, Royal County Down, Royal Melbourne and Royal Dornoch. Not bad company. But really, rankings and sprankings aside, how can one or an army of raters even attempt to put a grade on perfection? For that is what Sand Hills Golf Club is, a golf setting and experience in its perfect purest form and unlike any other.

Arguably, Sand Hills is the most organic golf course in the world. Set amongst the most surreal landscape of raw mountainous dunes, perfect sand base, abundant underground water supply from the Ogallala aquifer, no trees and infinity views, Sand Hills 18 golf holes appears to have emerged naturally from 18 separate yet connected corridors. Certainly, man helped disrobe the golf holes set amidst the rolling and heaving dunes, that seemingly were waiting to be discovered by genius. And genius arrived in the form of golf course architect Bill Coore and his design collaborator and partner, PGA professional, Ben Crenshaw in 1990.

The risk-taking visionary and Managing Partner of Sand Hills, Dick Youngscap, hired Coore and Crenshaw to find 18 golf holes that would work on his 8,000 acres of western Nebraska sand hills. Finding golf holes for Coore and Crenshaw was not a problem; they found over 130 potentially magnificent golf holes. The dilemma for them was paring 130 plus down to 18.

After several site visits, Coore and Crenshaw, decided on #1 and #18. The other 16 were out there waiting to be linked to the two bookends. After more thought and field work, they finalized their routing into the masterpiece of what you see today. #1 is one of the most compellingly beautiful and strategic opening holes in the world. #18 is also one of the most brilliant finishing holes in the world. The holes in between are some of greatest succession of golf holes ever realized. Frankly, there isn't much to complain about Sand Hills except maybe your game.

Because the site was so adaptable to golf, the construction costs were minimal. With a perfect sand base, each hole from tee to green were essentially built on USGA green specs. The greens themselves were built right on the native sand without greensmix and drainage. The natural contours and landforms of each hole already existed and needed very minimal shaping by a small power rake. The bunker cavities and edges were carved out of the existing faces of the sand dunes with a backhoe. The only import in construction was the irrigation system which accounted for 85% of the total construction cost. Not only did a fabulous golf course emerge from the dunes with this careful approach, it cost next to nothing to build and disturbed very little of the native habitat. A win win all around for everybody involved.

For the serious golfer, playing Sand Hills is one of life's rare treats. Each hole is different and magnificent. Every golf hole sits glowingly in its own room yet linked to the whole in continuum. There is no signature hole here. All holes are spectacular. The dunes-induced fairways average over 70 yards wide due to the wind corridor the valley sits in. The mercurial wind can come from various directions and Coore and Crenshaw factored that into their design. The windswept and wild looking bunkers both pot and huge are very daunting and beautiful in their wise placement on each hole. The variety of greens is brilliant design. Most of the greens are large that range from mellow contours on #10 to the dramatic contours on #2.

There were many appealing aspects to my experience at Sand Hills...almost too many to mention. Unforgettable and lovely come to mind while walking the tee to fairway paths through the wild wind buffeted Nebraska grasslands with grasshoppers a-chattering and jumping every which way. In fact, walking the golf course was one of the most appealing aspects of Sand Hills. It was dreamlike. The total experience really effected me deeply. Call it a spiritual awakening to a transcendent being or whatever, but, in the simplest terms, my personal experience at Sand Hills was so much more than golf itself. It was otherworldly.

So, I asked myself, is Sand Hills heaven? No, it's western Nebraska.

Go Huskers.

Happy Golfing!