Bandon Dunes and Sand Valley: The Dream 18 the People Who Work There Built

Somewhere over the middle of the country, flipping through the Dream Golf magazine, I hit a spread that stopped me cold. The resort team had done the one thing every golf group does over the third beer of a buddy trip: they built their dream 18. Except these folks had better source material than the rest of us. They had two of the best collections of golf in North America to pick from, and they work there.

Quick background for anyone who has not made the pilgrimage. Dream Golf is the company behind Bandon Dunes on the Oregon coast and Sand Valley in central Wisconsin. Between the two properties you are looking at 13 courses and 223 holes, built up over more than 25 years. That is a lot of golf, and as the magazine cheerfully admits, it might take you a couple of trips to get through all of it. You should take a couple of trips. Trust me on this one.

So the team posed itself a simple question. If you could stitch together one composite 18 out of every hole at both resorts, what makes the cut? They went around the building and asked everyone from the marketing director to the head of finance to the woman who runs the Charitable Foundation. The result is a par 71 that runs 6,585 yards and pulls at least one hole from every single course. Here is how it shakes out, and who stuck their neck out for what.

The Front Nine

They hand the opening tee shot to Brandon Carter, Director of Marketing at Sand Valley, who leads off with Sand Valley’s 2nd. It is pure Coore and Crenshaw: an aggressive line off the tee buys you a little breathing room on an approach that will otherwise eat your lunch. Carter also grabs the 17th at Sedge Valley, where avoiding the bunkers off the tee is the whole ballgame and a center-cut drive still leaves you a precise one in.

Then Tom Doak shows up, as he tends to. Tom Ferrell from media and communications takes the 13th at Pacific Dunes, the hole he says he daydreamed about before he ever set foot in Bandon. Seaside, towering dunes, uphill approach. Hard to argue. Ferrell also drops in the 7th at Commons, the newest course at Sand Valley, a short par 4 from Jim Craig where long hitters can have a go at the green and everyone else faces a blind uphill wedge over a deep bunker. Birdies and bogeys both live there.

Nathan Kahler from the Bandon digital team takes the coast. He picks the 16th at Bandon Dunes, which he calls an icon for a reason, and the opening hole at Sheep Ranch, where you tee off among the trees, crest a hill, and find the green sitting right on top of the Pacific.

The pick of the front, though, belongs to Jon Kaull, SVP of Finance, who turns out to be the most quotable person in the building. He takes the 16th at Lido, Doak’s recreation of the lost C.B. Macdonald original, and calls it maybe the best Redan anywhere. His verdict on the man behind that template is that he wants to both hug and strangle C.B. Macdonald. Anyone who has been chewed up by a good Redan knows exactly what he means. Kaull also grabs the short 6th at Sedge Valley, the kind of drivable par 4 that is all temptation and consequence.

Closing the nine is Jess McClellan, head pro at Old Macdonald, with the 4th at Bandon Dunes. The story behind that pick is the one that will get you. Fresh off a cross-country flight for a summer internship, McClellan joined the other interns for a round less than an hour after landing, came around the dogleg on 4, and got that first look at the ocean. That was the moment it clicked why people fly in from all over the world. And then it sank in that this was going to be home for the summer.

The Back Nine

McClellan opens the back with the 7th at Old Macdonald, the Doak and Urbina tribute to what C.B. Macdonald might have done with a beautiful piece of ground. The steep uphill approach plays into the wind more often than not, which is to say good luck.

Here is the quirk that proves these people are real golfers: Sedge Valley’s 17th makes the list twice. It went in back at the 2nd, and now Michael O’Toole, Sand Valley’s Senior Director of Golf and a former head pro at both Pacific Dunes and Bandon Dunes, takes it again at the 11th. When a hole is good enough to draft twice in your own dream 18, that tells you something. O’Toole’s read on it is all strategy: thread the needle between two fairway bunkers onto a 25-yard strip, because it is the only clean angle into a green that looks impossibly shallow from the fairway. It is.

O’Toole also takes the 17th at Old Macdonald, a par 5 where every shot asks a question and the hourglass green can make a routine two-putt feel like grand theft.

The middle of the back belongs to the magazine crew. Editor Robert Thompson picks two: the 14th at Mammoth Dunes, a David McLay-Kidd downhill dare that begs you to pull driver and find the right slot, and the 17th at Sand Valley, the Coore and Crenshaw punchbowl where the whole thrill is hiking to the top to find out where your ball ended up.

Then the back nine gets its heart. Marie Simonds, who runs the Bandon Dunes Charitable Foundation, takes the 11th at Bandon Preserve, the Coore and Crenshaw par-3 course. Her reason has nothing to do with strategy. It is an evening round, the sun going down, and a look back to see her two sons standing with their arms around each other, talking quietly while the sky went gold. If that one does not land for you, check your pulse.

David Cowx from design and production keeps it short and sweet with the 17th at Lido, a 610-yard par 5 modeled on the 14th at St Andrews, where clearing both sets of cross bunkers sets up a wedge and a real birdie look.

The closing two go to Olivia Herrick, VP of Brand and Guest Experience, and they are both Wisconsin. She gives the 17th spot to the 5th at Mammoth Dunes, the front end of a stretch she swears feels like playing inside a national park, best experienced at sunset. And she closes the whole thing on the 8th at Shorty’s, the 104-yard short-course hole where she stops, exhales, and remembers why she plays. Ending your dream 18 on a wedge from a par-3 course instead of some 480-yard brute is a power move, and I respect it.

What’s Yours?

That is the entire point of the exercise, and it is the question the magazine ends on. A par 71 stitched together from 13 courses, picked by the people who know the place better than anyone, and they still could not help repeating a hole and finishing on a 104-yarder. There is no right answer. There is only your answer, which you will defend loudly and then change completely the next time you play.

So consider this your homework for the next buddy trip. Get the group to Bandon, or to Sand Valley, or to both if you have the vacation days and the marriage credits. Play until you have opinions. Then build your own dream 18 and see whose holds up at dinner.

This is their dream 18. What is yours?