Description

The third course to open at Bandon Dunes Resort, Bandon Trails offers the beauty of forest golf melded with the tall grasses under foot and crashing ocean just a driver away over the dunes. It’s the best of Bandon Dunes and Pacific Dunes, but with a much more playable yet also more strategic track to tackle. That was one of the goals two-time Masters champ Ben Crenshaw and co-designer Bill Coore set for themselves when they took on the assignment to turn arguably golf’s best twosome into an even better threesome. “There was some concern whether we could transition from one type of environment to another, in seamless fashion, so you don’t feel like you’re playing two or three different golf courses,” Coore told Fairways + Greens not long before the course opened to the public. “So we came up with different routings and finally said, ‘We can do this.’ It’s not only different from the other two courses, but it’s different unto itself. It’s a journey.” And an adventure, which sets Bandon Trails even further apart as golfers find themselves trudging along dirt paths with little else than orange posts to guide them. The Trails is one of the few golf courses ever built where you truly lose touch with all other golfers on the course. All the while, straight-ahead golf lies before you, each shot demanding a personal plan of attack. Masters of strategy, not one of Crenshaw-Coore’s elements seems extraneous. Nothing is added for effect because everything they needed was already there — tumultuous, dune-carved angles; sweeping elevation changes, including the rise to the course’s highest point on the back nine and the subsequent tee shot cascading you downward once again; trees that force better players to shape the shots required to post memorable scoring rounds. At Bandon Trails, the driver can’t wait to jump out of the bag and have you give it a rip if you dare.