Bandon Stories

Nearly two decades after it was created, the incredible oceanside site was placed in the hands of world-renowned designers Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw. The result—the sixth course at Bandon Dunes, Sheep Ranch, a course the entire golf world will be talking about in 2020.

Bill Coore faced a conundrum.

Two years ago, the golf architect, who along with his partner, Masters winner Ben Crenshaw, has built many of the best courses in the world, was about to move forward with creating a new design just across the roadway from Bandon Dunes’ Old Macdonald. Since 2001, the property in question housed a golf facility people spoke of in hushed tones, experienced by very few. Many knew of the course—called the Sheep Ranch—but few had the opportunity to venture out onto the property that presented a golf experience like no other. With no formal holes, golfers simply picked a green to play to. The site, owned by Bandon Dunes creator Mike Keiser and his long-time business partner, Phil Friedmann, was breathtaking, resting on bluffs overlooking the ocean. It was the stuff of legend. And now Coore and Crenshaw were being asked to make a formal golf course on the site.

Coore was very sensitive to Friedmann’s connection to the property. “The Sheep Ranch was his sanctuary and it was an important place for Phil and his family,” Coore says. “I recall asking him if he wanted to give it up. I told him if we do this, it will no longer be this hidden course that Phil and his family and some rare folks get to see. It’ll be completely different. And he was candid about it and said it was time for it to change and to give others the opportunity to experience a special property. That gave Ben and myself the comfort that we were doing something he really wanted to happen.”

Friedmann was convinced the time was right to create something more formal on the property. As Bandon Dunes’ success continued, the desire to create a fifth full-length golf course increased. But there weren’t many options for where that course might go, while the Sheep Ranch property sat within eyesight of Old Macdonald. It was a natural fit, and in time, Friedmann prepared himself to make the move. “I’d enjoyed it for close to 20 years and there was no rush to compete with Bandon Dunes,” he says. “But we felt it was time, with the resort not creating any new projects, to develop the Sheep Ranch and incorporate it as a cousin to the resort.”

For Keiser, it would be the only instance at Bandon Dunes where he wouldn’t have the final say. Sure, he’d collaborated with numerous designers, ranging from David McLay Kidd to Jim Urbina and Tom Doak, but this project would be different. That said, he and Friedmann were partners for a long time, having created Recycled Paper Greetings as college students in Chicago nearly 50 years earlier. “I’m convinced with a golf resort there are a lot of issues that are hard to get a committee to agree to—you can drown in issues,” says Keiser. “There are hundreds of decisions and doing them by committee is horrible. But Phil and I had known each other for years. It was different.”

A routing challenge.

The site where Sheep Ranch has sat for two decades is staggeringly breathtaking, with jagged coastline perched high above the beach and the raging waters of the Pacific Ocean. Anyone who had the opportunity to play the course in its original context came away wondering what it could be if it were less random, and instead was turned into a conventional 18-hole course. And yes, Coore agrees, the site has few rivals, but it also had challenges, something Keiser and Friedmann both recognized. For one thing, it wasn’t a sprawling site, and required a concise, smart routing to capture its key features, especially the land along the ocean.

“It took Bill Coore to show us it was possible,” says Keiser, adding other architects also devised routings on the site. “What Bill and Ben did stunned us—getting all 18 holes on the side of a ravine that is on the east. Bill turned a negative—it isn’t a spacious site—into a positive with nine greens on the ocean bluff.”

Finding the right routing was the challenge, and Coore walked the property repeatedly, often with Friedmann wandering with him, trying to find a way to make it work.

“I didn’t know Phil well before we started this project,” says Coore. “I’d met him and knew quite a bit about him given his relationship with Mike. But I hadn’t spent time individually with him. I remember distinctly that he came out early in the process when I was walking the property, and it was a horrific day with rain and heavy wind. To say it was miserable is an understatement. And Phil came out and stayed the entire day in that weather. And I remember thinking, ‘This guy is really serious about this.’”

Coore, who has created numerous Top 100 courses in the world, found a specific challenge at the Sheep Ranch—how to use the coastline most effectively, while not making the routing feel cramped. He compares it to doing a puzzle when you aren’t sure what the picture is.

Considering it was his first foray into the golf design world, Friedmann came away amazed by the experience.

“Walking it a year ago with Bill and Ben and seeing the care they put into the routing and how they figured out how to put so much of the course on the edge of the ocean was incredible,” he explains. “It was a great opportunity to walk the open ground with people who had their experience, and begin to see how someone like Bill figures it out. Seeing it come together is equally fascinating.”

Coore recognized the potential along the coastline, but making compelling holes inland was equally important. With that in mind, he worked from the coastline inwards, occasionally placing the tees for two holes (2 and 18, 5 and 15, and 8 and 10) in proximity to create width.

legend and lore
 

by Christian Hafer

Looking to the North from Old Macdonald we could see something happening across Whiskey Run. Large yellow machines tumbled across the horizon kicking up dirt. The wind chased those big tires around, throwing the dirt off into the Pacific Ocean. 
 

Something was clearly happening with the Sheep Ranch, the top-secret course across the way that had become legend over the last two decades, with greens hosed by an old fire truck and no formal routing or yardages. 
 
For years, those lucky enough to get access to the Sheep Ranch would simply find their own way around it and make it their own course—at least for one round. That day, when we walked off Old Macdonald, the call came to be ready to go before sunrise. 
 
We were going to check out what was happening over the valley at the Sheep Ranch. It turns out, what was happening could be the start of a major shift in golf.

Tattered and bare, what were once trees on the Sheep Ranch have become nothing more than gnarled snags shooting upwards against the glowing gorse in the moonlight. 
 

From the course, your eye is drawn south down the yellow flecked coastline to well beyond Bandon Dunes’ 16th hole. The greens seem to flow directly into the beach below. 
 
 

Tucked back into the trees a little way from the coastline sits a bright red fire truck. A well-known artifact of the old Sheep Ranch, it now sits watching the evolution unfold in front of its rusty headlights. Part functional art, part lore and legend. 
 
 

The Sheep Ranch’s famed ‘E Green’ pushes onward towards the ocean as the sunlight finally breaks the horizon. This part of the course is bound to become one of the most mesmerizing spots in golf. 
 
 

Jim Craig is a soft—spoken guy who graciously talked us through the work being done. We chatted about the concept of the new course and then let him get to work. I found it fascinating to watch him go about his business. Much like photography, his job is solitary and a mixture of technical know—how and creative ability. 
 
 

If you ever get a chance to walk a golf course as the sun grows or sleeps, please do it. You’ll notice new things if you look closely. The light catches all of the natural movement we take for granted. The work being done to create interesting, fun, and creative golf shines as the light wanes. The shapers working on the Sheep Ranch often found new little bumps here or humps you hadn’t noticed, and rather than plowing over them, they incorporated them into the design. In that way, they took what was there and made one of the most intriguing and visual courses I have seen in years. 
 
 

"Day in and day out, there are few courses that are more ever-changing than those at Bandon Dunes.” That’s the perspective of Ben Kimball, USGA senior director of championships on the U.S. Amateur, which this summer will be played over two courses—Bandon Dunes and Bandon Trails. The world’s most notable amateur championship—and one with distinct connections to the game’s origins—will be battled out on courses that are a world apart from the standard parkland settings that have hosted the championship in the past.

Instead, players venturing to the Oregon coast will find firm turf and nuanced, half-hidden crevices and hollows that randomly bounce a ball away from its intended line. You need to anticipate them. And there’s the ever-present wind that can make an easy shot suddenly very difficult. It is unpredictable golf in the same way that the great Irish and Scottish links are whimsical. And that’s exactly what Kimball is counting on for the U.S. Amateur, where 312 players will enter, but only one will walk away as champion.

Bandon Trails

“When golf was created in Scotland, the game they played then and play today looks more like Bandon than what we get in most of the United States,” says Kimball. “Bandon is closer to the origins of golf in the world from the landscape and how Mother Nature impacts the way we play. It is more of a ground game than an aerial game. And it likely strikes people as unusual, but it is actually more of a throwback to the way the game was.”

The medal portion of the championship will be played on David McLay Kidd’s Bandon Dunes and Bandon Trails, designed by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, with the match play rounds on Bandon Dunes. To Kimball’s way of thinking, all the courses at Bandon present a perspective rarely found in North America.

“The seaside winds make all the courses at Bandon Dunes unpredictable. What appears benign in the morning can become devilishly tricky if the winds come up later in the day. That’s one of the most intriguing elements of the resort for the USGA,” he says. “It is a different set of challenges the player has to overcome, really different than what you get in other parts of the U.S. It tests the player’s ability to be nimble. The rewards for winning the U.S. Amateur are so great that you want to make sure, year in and year out, that the player holding the trophy is the player that adapted better than anyone else. There’s a lot more to it than simply shooting the lowest score. The lowest score doesn’t often win this, and there’s a different set of factors the greatest players will have to overcome to take the championship.”

What are the keys to winning the most prestigious amateur championship in the world? Kimball says there are holes on each course that players will have to successfully navigate if they want to hoist the Havemeyer Trophy at the end.