Dream Golf | Wild Spring Dunes

A DREAM SITE IN THE LAND OF THE LONE STAR STATE

WORDS BY JEFF BROOKE • IMAGES BY JEFF MARSH & RYAN LOCHHEAD

No one quite remembers how or when the hill got its name, but presumably it has something to do with its resemblance to a bald man’s head, free of the trees and other vegetation that populate much of the surrounding land.


Hunters once built blinds on Old Baldy and from there they had a hidden and elevated vantage point as they waited for white-tailed deer and wild hogs to enter their crosshairs. “They could sit up there and there’s probably 600 yards off the backside of that hill that you can see,” says Kyle Keeling, a real estate broker and native of Mount Enterprise who cared for and represented this land. He’s also the pastor at Still Waters Cowboy Church. Keeling knows the neighborhood and this property as well as anyone. He once hunted hogs here himself. “It was always a landmark to us because it was so easily identifiable,” Keeling explains.


A different kind of shot will soon be fired from Old Baldy. The 40-foot-high sandy protrusion is at the heart of plans for a new Dream Golf destination. Wild Spring Dunes is set to open for Founder play in late 2025 with public play soon to follow, and will transform not only an isolated piece of Texas land, but perhaps an entire region where great golf is in short supply.


Tee shots on three holes of the new resort’s two courses will be struck from Old Baldy and the hill will feature in a total of five holes as either a launch pad, a landform to navigate, or a backdrop for the eyes.


The drama will be palpable, but it’s not the only part of the property that excites the senses. The 2,463-acre site is blessed with spring-fed creeks that meander throughout, a striking escarpment, valleys, dense areas of pine and hardwood trees, and even open savannas. Golfers will go on a journey through several distinct ecosystems.

As naturally spectacular as the land is, its success as a playing ground for golf will depend more on a less-obvious, humbler characteristic: its dirt. The property is mostly covered in sand, unusual for a part of Texas where red clay is noticeably the norm.


The sand is what initially drew Brett Messerall to the plot off U.S. Route 259 near Mount Enterprise, population 505, a few hours southeast of his hometown of Dallas and about 30 minutes from the idyllic college town of Nacogdoches. It convinced him that the next great U.S. golf escape should be built there.


“I just wanted to do my part of putting us on the map and trying to create something that was a little bit different, a little more unique,” says the 39-year-old Messerall, a proud Texan, serial entrepreneur, and golf enthusiast, who had long been frustrated that his large, golf-mad state did not have a public course inside the top 100 of most national rankings. When he traveled outside Texas to top-tier golf destinations on the buddy trips he organized, he’d wonder why his home state couldn’t offer the same.


Messerall began researching possible sites almost as a curiosity, and through the Covid-19 pandemic, his fantasies transformed into an obsessive hunt that included viewing more than a million acres on online aerial maps, poring over archived government soil reports and topography maps, and talking to soil scientists.


He knew sandy ground was a critical ingredient and he learned that loblolly pine trees grow in sandy terrain, so he zeroed in on a region that’s called the Pine Curtain, a swath where the softwood trees flourish, running from the extreme eastern portion of Texas into the Southeast, ending in the Carolinas. Keeling, broker turned pastor, assisted in the search.


Although Messerall investigated a few dozen properties in person, he ultimately settled on the first one, smitten by the sand and the contours of the land.


He recalls touring the property with a friend and the seller’s agent, trying to keep a poker face. “I remember multiple times looking back at my buddy sitting in the back of the broker’s pickup truck, and just kind of giving him like a wide eye; it’s an exciting kind of thing,” he says. “I think we knew then and there that this was the property.


"Two chunks of the parcel were part of larger forestry operations (though still open to hunters under a land-use agreement) but the sandy soil on much of the land didn’t yield the type or volume of wood that excites logging companies. The creeks and valleys were obstacles. Even pine trees didn’t grow that well there, and the owners were willing to part with it. Another chunk was purchased from a local family trust.

5 of 7