Architect Trevor Dormer has started construction work on the rebuild of the Old Dane course in northeast Nebraska, USA.
Work began with the excavation of a two acre lake, to store irrigation water and provide around 40,000 cubic yards of fill material for Dormer to reshape the extremely flat golf course.
The former Coore & Crenshaw associate is leading the construction team, using staff from the farming operation controlled by the Andersen family, which owns Old Dane and the nearby Landmand course.
Dormer expects to get the lake fully dug out, and at least four holes roughed in before winter brings a half to construction in November or December. The team will return in spring and expect the course to be grassed later in 2025 for a reopening in 2026.
“Old Dane is a great community asset, but it didn’t really have anything special about it as a golf course,” said Dormer. “With the fill material we are generating from the lake excavation, and the reshaping work we can do elsewhere on the site, I am hopeful that we can do something really quite good out here.”
Dormer is extending the former nine-hole course to twelve. The eleventh green will be a ‘volcano’, sitting around fifteen feet higher than its surroundings, and the third and eighth holes will share a fairway. The architect is aiming for a general increase in fairway width, and to make the most of the 93 acre property – including removing the driving range to accommodate the three extra holes.
“That might seem a strange decision – driving ranges generally are seen as money makers for public courses, but it is my view that golfers want to play golf, not to stand on a range and beat balls into a field, so the more golf we can give them, the better,” said Dormer. The Andersen family owns a site across the road from Old Dane, so could potentially build a new driving range if required.
Read more: Trevor Dormer to extend Old Dane to 12 holes
Owner Will Andersen said: “I’m really excited to see Trevor start work on reimagining Old Dane. The course means a lot to me and my family – it was our first foray into the golf business, so it could be seen as the progenitor of Landmand in a way. And, obviously, we have a lot of golfers travelling a long way to play Landmand, so if we can provide them with more interesting golf to play while they are in the area, it will encourage people to stay longer and put more money into the local economy, which is important to us. When we bought the course, I redesigned it myself. I did the best job I could, but I’m just a golfer who has seen a bunch of good courses, in no sense a professional golf architect. So it is great that the course is being reimagined by someone with Trevor’s vision and ability to realise it.”