So many of us come to this game because of our parents. I certainly did. My dad is the reason I ever picked up a club, and he is the reason I have spent the last 30 years chasing the world's greatest golf courses. My first visit to Prairie Dunes was with him in the spring of '23, and I immediately fell in love—with both the course and the story behind it: Press Maxwell completing his father Perry Maxwell's vision. To me, it is one of the greatest father–son stories in golf.
That thought was on my mind as I boarded a plane to Wichita to meet up with friends from the Lockhart Travel Club—luggage-free, thanks to our friends at Ship Sticks.
I am a sucker for a great drive-in—think Friar's Head or Crystal Downs—and Prairie Dunes hits you instantly. You're swallowed by rolling dunes and mature cottonwoods, with layers of "gunch" lurking everywhere. By reputation alone, you know that some of the most diabolical green complexes in the game are waiting in the aesthetic. Sometimes you just know you're going to love a course on first contact. I knew before I teed off. After eighteen holes, I was obsessed. Two years later, I still firmly believe it is one of the very best in the United States.
To understand Prairie Dunes, you must start long before golf ever existed. For hundreds of millions of years, what is now Kansas lay beneath ancient shallow seas. Those waters deposited the sand, silt, and minerals that would eventually form the region's unique soils. When the oceans receded—roughly 275 million years ago—vast beds of salt were left behind, creating one of the world's great underground salt deposits.
Much later, during drier and windier eras, these sandy sediments were shaped by relentless prairie winds into the dune systems that still ripple across the landscape today. No glaciers—just time, wind, and an ancient seafloor waiting to become a golf course.
Fast-forward to the early 20th century. After the salt deposits in Hutchinson were tapped, local businessman Emerson Carey founded what became the Carey Salt Company, pioneering large-scale salt and ice production in the United States. The mine has operated for over a century and still runs today as the Hutchinson Salt Company.
If you are not claustrophobic, the underground tour—Strataca—is a surreal, slightly disorienting experience. You descend roughly 650 feet into the earth in the original mine-shaft elevator, swallowed by total darkness. Not your typical après-golf activity.
With the salt business thriving, Mr. Carey—an unabashed golf fanatic—commissioned Perry Maxwell in 1935 to build a course on the nearby dunes. Maxwell, of Augusta, Crystal Downs, and Southern Hills fame, was reportedly so taken by the property that he said he would have to eliminate a hundred great golf holes just to get down to eighteen. Working with a skeleton crew, a handful of horses, and his trusty Fresno scraper, he carved out nine extraordinary holes—today's 1, 2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 17, and 18—which opened in 1937.
After Perry's death in 1952, his son Press—who had worked alongside him since returning from WWII—was brought in to finish the vision. Press designed and built holes 3–5 and 11–16, opening them in 1957 and completing what may be the most seamless father-son collaboration in golf architecture. Historians and raters still marvel that you cannot tell where Perry ends and Press begins.
What they created has aged with almost supernatural grace. Prairie Dunes has required remarkably little restorative work. It has hosted multiple USGA championships and NCAA events and remains one of the sternest tests in American golf.
The greens are the soul of the course. With full respect to Oakmont Country Club, I genuinely believe Prairie Dunes has the best, most interesting, and most challenging set of 18 greens in the United States. There is not a weak or throwaway hole or putting surface on the property. Precision is not optional; touch is mandatory.
I loved having Ship Sticks send my clubs directly from my home club to Prairie Dunes, where they were waiting for me outside my room in the Founder's Lodge. I walked straight to the short-game practice area to immerse myself immediately and sharpen my touch for what lay ahead. I love chipping and pitching—the creativity, the imagination of the short game—and Prairie Dunes lights up the part of my brain that loves the craft of scoring.
The Maxwells must have had short games from another planet. Whether the greens were running at 7 on the Stimpmeter in 1937 or 13 in 2025, average golfers would struggle to handle them. I do not see a 20-handicap breaking 100 here most days. Proper technique and total conviction are prerequisites. If you can two-putt and get up-and-down at Prairie Dunes, you can score anywhere. There is no robust caddie program, so the decision-making is entirely yours.
It is an easy walk, though riding is not uncommon and the cart paths are unobtrusive, if not hidden. Tee boxes and green sites are framed with cottonwoods. Fairways twist and turn gently, rising and falling symphonically. The infamous gunch lines the fairways and presents itself at every key decision point. Aesthetically, it adds spectacular visual appeal—but finding your ball in it, let alone advancing it, is unlikely. One loose swing can bring round-killing prairie bramble into play.
The bunker sand is orangey and powder-soft on top, yet firm underneath. A well-played bunker shot will grab; anything less will release onto those tabletop greens. The bunkering is masterful—and the more courses I see, the more I believe this is often the line between good design and great design.
On the Doak Scale, I would consider Prairie Dunes to be a solid 9. At Top100golfcourses.com, we have it ranked #15 USA/North America and #28 in the World. While I may argue for a slightly higher ranking in the USA, the World Ranking is so impressive that the defence rests.
A perfect day at Prairie Dunes ends with the house specialities: the Haystack salad, the PD Smashburger, and a frozen Gunch Punch or two. Chapstick is a must with the wind a constant. Layers are recommended, though the pro shop has you fully covered with top brands and an outstanding yucca-in-bloom logo. We had the special opportunity to view the original Maxwell Collection paintings by Mark Rivard of Charcoal Golf—commissioned by the club and chronicling the original Perry Maxwell nine. Look for them on display in the clubhouse.
The mixing at PD is fostered by perfect congregation spots: the Card Room (bar and grill), the bar and fire pits at the Founder's Lodge, and, of course, the lit putting green. I've done both family-style Kansas BBQ in the Founder's Lodge—with Hutchinson local sauce—and a classic three-square in the Card Room. Both are outstanding options. Quick breakfasts to get you on the tee. Burgers to seared duck breast at supper.
The Card Room is elite for logo bingo—like a settler's outpost from old western times—mixing national members with sophisticated guests from great clubs all over the world who have made the pilgrimage to Hutchinson. And when your head finally hits the pillow in the Founder's Lodge, you may find yourself thinking that you are not in Kansas anymore.
Words - Matt Kaul
Edited - Jasper Miners
