Sand Hills
There’s been so much written about this Coore/ Crenshaw design that it’s tough to add anything of value. Routinely hailed as one of the best courses in the world, its layout is an elegant showcase of the landscape as much as it is a golf course design, a fact born out in the comment that Coore and Crenshaw moved “only teaspoons of dirt” to create it. Built in 1995, it arguably was an early part of the retro “minimalist movement” in course architecture that emerged in the 1990s and which is perhaps most famously practiced by Tom Doak. Like Doak’s course at Dismal River, just up the road and also in Mullen, it’s tough to know how to allocate credit for the experience on offer here: does it go to Mother Nature for creating such a soul-affecting landscape—or to the architects for essentially leaving that landscape alone? We’ll thank everyone involved and just be happy that places like this exist. With something like 200 members spread all over the world, this isn’t the easiest tee time to get for visitors (there’s not even a website), but if you know someone who knows someone and they invite you to play, we suggest you say “yes” and “thank you.”