Every now and then I find myself driving by an intriguing piece of property. Intriguing for me as a golf architect means I see high points that need to be connected in the form of tees, landing areas, and greens. It also means visualizing how certain landforms can create strategy. Ridges, hollows, saddle points, swales. All can dictate strategic choices and provide natural settings for memorable golf course features, elements like those our architecture forefathers discovered not just along the links land of Scotland, but on similarly-inspirational pieces of ground during the Golden Age of Golf Architecture in America. If you drive past one of these sites often enough, you may not be able to resist how you may route a golf course on such an intrigue. Fed up with tantalizing possibilities running through my head over the years, I finally succumbed to breaking out my centerlines and having a little fun. This site is too good to not hammer something out. The result is an eighteen hole layout of the greatest potential: Each hole has a specific strategy directly derived from the natural landforms on which they sit. Little earth moved will be necessary in this true minimalist routing. Lots of imagination will be required to play it, though. So in the spirit of collaboration the greats of the Golden Age breathed, I introduce The Sandhills Club, eighteen holes wandering through sandy soils, grabbing every natural feature along the way to provide strategic options golfers can negotiate over and over again in their pursuit of a great experience.
The Sandhills Club was recently featured in the ASGCA's By Design Magazine - Spring 2020 Edition. Click the link below to download the article!