Golf Course Architecture - Issue 77, July 2024

Photo: Brandon Carter 67 Tom Doak’s newest creation at Sand Valley might convince American golfers that courses do not need to be long to be great. Richard Humphreys pays a visit. The Sand Valley resort was a bucket-list destination even before its latest addition. Now, it offers golfers more variety and appeal than almost any other resort in the US. Sand Valley debuted in 2017 with 18 holes of firm and fast golf laid out by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw over massive dunes in central Wisconsin. In 2018, David McLay Kidd added a second course, Mammoth Dunes, with fairways of epic width and playerfriendly contouring. In the same year, the resort opened another Coore and Crenshaw design, the Sandbox, a 17-hole par-three layout. In 2023, The Lido opened, a first-of-a-kind project that saw the historic and lost Charles Blair Macdonald course in Long Island recreated by Tom Doak and team, who replicated its blend of classic template and original holes in as precise detail as possible based on a combination of extensive historic research and modern digital technologies. But the Keiser family – who have defined destination golf in the US with their Dream Golf business that owns Sand Valley, plus the seven-course Bandon Dunes resort in Oregon, and the upcoming Rodeo Dunes in Colorado and Wild Spring Dunes in Texas – were not ready to stop there. When exploring

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