| TRAVEL: Learning in Nirvana - Bandon Dunes |
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On Golf Guide's trip to Bandon Dunes on the Oregon coast, a stark contrast between Scottish and American sensibilities can be learned at the most spectacular golf setting in the world. (Photo, No. 13 at Pacific Dunes, by Golf Guides USA)
By BRETT CYRGALIS It enters subtly, the idea germinating with each deepening shadow across the sand hillocks, with each wave of the Pacific Ocean rolling into the next to create a gentle locomotive of thunder, with each hard breeze across your face or dense fog across your palm. Bandon Dunes, the golf resort on the southwestern Oregon coast, is a place of unique wonder. It takes the scenery of Pebble Beach, the soul of St. Andrews in Scotland, and the golfing acumen of Pine Valley, and combines it all into one flurry of greatness. There are four full-length courses: Bandon Dunes, Pacific Dunes, Bandon Trails, and Old Macdonald. A 13-hole par-3 course called Bandon Perserve was just added, as well, and it has views to trump them all. But what plays out over these rugged, coastal sand hills – a natural linksland that is unequalled anywhere in the United States – is a study in sensibilities. Most notably, that is the American braggadocio of Pacific Dunes compared to the dry Scottish wit of Bandon Dunes. *** The original course at the resort, holding the Bandon Dunes namesake, was designed by David McLay Kidd, a Scotsman who is not afraid to take chances, but who is irrevocably attached to doing things in a manner he finds right and proper. He was approached by the owner, Mike Keiser, and asked to create “something authentic and true to the Scottish tradition,” writes McLay Kidd in the opening of the Bandon Dunes yardage book. “My reply was, ‘No real estate, no golf carts, no clubhouse on the beach.’ ” The result was a piece of land that is held in the highest regard, that is not torn up and molded into something it’s not, but rather tweaked for more definition and the grasses smoothed out for play. The bunkers are normally small and steep-faced affairs, placed in the little nooks and crannies of the rolling terrain like homes for sheep when the rain comes and the wind blows. They create angles of attack for green sites that are at times perfectly situated among the larger dunes, and others perfectly situated hanging over cliffs into the Pacific Ocean. There are waste areas where the land was waste, and the carries over them are only forced if you chose to tee your ball from certain places. Sometimes waste will boarder a hole, but never will you feel squeezed.
To say that Bandon Dunes is simple would be wrong. More often than not, the strategy is complicated. There are few absolutes anywhere on the course, so if you don’t think your golf through, it could seem like a wide-open field. In reality, precision is at the highest value. The greens are large and undulating, but not so much as to limit their possible high speeds. (That extreme was left to Old Macdonald, where the greens are as large as those of The Old Course in St. Andrews and have what can be closer described as elevation changes rather than undulation.) Pacific Dunes, on similarly wonderful land, approaches the game a bit differently. It was designed by Tom Doak, a Michiganite by birth and a Scotsman at heart. Normally, Doak’s signature is the natural feel to his courses, with routings that flow from green to tee and bunkers that are not edged with a razor blade but blurred with native grasses. But never has Doak let the American in him be completely overwhelmed; never has he shied away from the dramatic, from the large, from the bold and daring. His courses let you know someone was there, and it was someone who was thinking about how to make your jaw drop by pointing out the beauty of the land, the beauty of nature. And jaw dropping is a common occurrence on Pacific Dunes, especially the holes that hang precipitously on the cliffs, over the beach, the sounds of the waves louder than anything that should be spoken at this heralded juncture. “I suspect that any golfer would have found some of the same holes, like the par-4 thirteenth hole along the ocean,” Doak wrote in the yardage book intro, “but it was an enormous responsibility to find the best possible routing on a site of such potential.”
He is right, maybe a perceptive golfer would have found No. 13 (pictured up top), a stretch of land exactly wide enough for a golf hole with ocean left and sand hills stacked on the right. What no modern architect except Doak would have had the imagination – or, as previously stated, the braggadocio – to accomplish are the back-to-back par-3s that start the back nine. The 10th hole is a bunkerless piece, angled in a way over some fescue so that the ocean ripples in the background as much as the ground that leads up to the turtleback green. No. 11 makes up for its predecessor’s lack of sand by counting seven traps as it stretches back to 148 yards. The two in front are flash-faced Doak specialties, while the two on the left side are kind enough to keep a wayward shot from heading down into the cliffs, and the three dug into the hill on the right making for a sand-scape aesthetic of supreme wonderment. The American-ness, if you will, of Pacific Dunes does not means it has waterfalls or cart paths or any extravagancies (there are no carts allowed on the courses except used by the handicapped). But it has an excess of beauty that was amplified by the hand of man. It’s a rugged landscape that wasn’t forced into anything, but upon it were discovered wonders not apparent to those without the will and confidence of a man like Tom Doak. *** Every person looks at golf in a different light, and every person has a perspective shaped by his or her origins. To be from America is to view golf differently than someone who grew up in Scotland, which is why a trip abroad, for both parties, is vitally important to even come close to a complete understanding of the game. Which is, in its nature, unknowable. But to strive for it, to make a journey of discovery, is more than worthwhile, but necessary. To be at Bandon Dunes is to see a symphony of nature, a study in how to embrace what is given to you and watch it embrace you back. It is a place for play, for golfing, and it is so much more. It is a physical communion with something unsaid, something hardly describable. If it is taken as anything less – which it often is by large groups of men with beer, cigars, and money on the mind – then it is taken at halfpence. To receive its full value, you must give of yourself, give over all of your conscious thoughts about golf, completely. You must be open, without filter. Bandon Dunes is nothing if not a justified hyperbole, a measuring stick that forces comparison. It is as consistent in its greatness as it is varied in the ways it gets there. What is omnipresent on golfing shores of Oregon is a sense of wonderment, and that is something that transcends national identities. Love it or hate it, let Brett know at
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