Bandon Dunes Golf Resort is a bit special and in many ways it’s a rather romantic place too. The little seaside town of Bandon is located on the remote southwest Oregon coastline at the mouth of the Coquille River. It’s a charming small town where the warm and friendly people live and breathe golf, just as they do at many seaside golfing towns up and down the Irish and British coastlines.
“From the moment I stepped out on these wild, wind-shaped sand dunes, I knew this would be the opportunity of a lifetime,” said David McLay Kidd a young Scottish architect. Bandon Dunes is his first notable design assignment and he made a pretty good job of it. With one third of the course set alongside the Pacific shoreline, it’s quite rightly a BIG hit.
OK, for those of you who have yet make the trip to Oregon, let’s put the Bandon Dunes Resort into perspective: 121 golf holes, idyllic accommodation, several restaurants and a Scottish-style pub. It’s quite an amazing place. Furthermore, the inaugural course at Bandon Dunes is possibly routed across the finest linksland outside Europe. Thank goodness it’s a walking only course where the absence of buggy paths allows its pure beauty to shine through.
Bandon Dunes opened for play in 1999 and it has never looked back. It’s a rugged layout with huge slick greens and immaculate all-round conditioning. Despite its windswept location, the holes are routed in all compass points and this helps Bandon Dunes to remain playable in most wind conditions. The 4th hole is one of our favorites, a 410-yard par four, which takes you out to a gorgeous green, sited on the edge of the Pacific. The tee shot at the short par four 16th is similar to the fantastic 17th at Castletown on the Isle of Man. An intimidating tee shot over a deep ravine, which is easier than it looks.
With four differing and beguiling 18-hole golf courses, Bandon Dunes quite rightly sits high up on many “must-play” lists and we thoroughly agree. Schedule a visit to the glorious remote venue immediately, you won’t be disappointed.
Over the winter of 2018/19 David McLay-Kidd returned to Bandon Dunes to renovate every bunker on every hole, some changes were cosmetic and others dramatic. The course hosted the final matches of the U.S. Amateur in August 2020 when 22-year-old Tyler Strafaci hoisted the Havemeyer Trophy eighty-five years after his granddad won the U.S. Amateur Public Links title.
