The Pellucid Perspective - September 2011 - (Page 8)

SANDHILLS GOLF There’s golf in them thar’ (sand) hills U.S. golf’s frontier may be right in the middle of the country By Jim Dunlap A s rural observers might say, new golf courses are scarcer than hen’s teeth in the U.S. these days, but don’t tell that to the inhabitants of the Great Sandhills region of Nebraska, northeastern Colorado and South Dakota … if you can find any. One of America’s most sparsely populated regions is, amazingly enough, home to what qualifies these days as a golf development boom. While the mildly legendary Sand Hills Golf Club in teeming Mullen, Neb. (pop. 491, 2000 census) is standing pat with its superb Bill Coore-Ben Crenshaw-designed 18, the covey of other remote but ruggedly spectacular clubs that followed Sand Hills developer Dick Youngscap’s lead into the wilderness are actually adding courses. Sand Hills’ Mullen“neighbor” (by Nebraska standards), the Dismal River Club, is currently adding a Tom Doak-designed course to complement their original Jack Nicklaus design. Rupert O’Neal’s Ballyneal club in Holyoke, Colo. has former Doak associate Bruce Hepner laying out two separate routing plans for a second Ballyneal course to join the original Doak design. Sutton Bay, a golf/hunting/fishing getaway in South Dakota, has brought back Australian designer Graham Marsh to lay out a second 18, although some shifting landforms on the original 18 may force some changes to the original course. The Prairie Club in Valentine, Neb. opened two regulation 18’s and a 10-hole pitch & putt last year, and is planning a third fulllength 18 by the short course designers, Gil Hanse, Jim Wagner and Geoff Shackelford. A new player also joined the fun this year when the Jim Engh-designed Awarii Dunes south of Kearney, Neb. opened for play on Memorial Day. That’s a lot of golf for a region where Hooker County (insert joke here, golf or otherwise), which is home to both Sand Hills and Dismal River, offers a population base of less than one person per mile. A golf development anomaly At first glance, a cluster (by local standards) of relatively high end, mostly private, primarily golf-only clubs would appear as logical in the Sandhills as a WalMart in Mullen. A closer look, however, reveals that there are economic, aesthetic and emotional reasons for what has been, At first glance, by and large, a success story by today’s industry a cluster (by local standards. standards) of For starters, consider that virtually all the Sanrelatively high end, dhills layouts have been mostly private, highly acclaimed, but due to the sandy soil, the rollprimarily golf-only ing terrain that requires clubs would appear little earthmoving, and the plentiful and cheap water as logical in the supplied primarily by the Sandhills as a underlying Ogallala Aquifer, they have virtually all WalMart in Mullen. been built for pennies on the dollar compared to the majority of courses where those factors don’t apply. Sand Hills, for instance, which opened in 1994, reportedly cost only $1.2 million to build, and moved less than 300,000 cubic yards of material, compared to a more typical total of over a million cubic yards for many modern layouts.. O’Neal, in contemplating a second Ballyneal course, said, “We can build another great track here for about $2 million, and courses in other parts of the country won’t believe how cheap it is to operate a course in this part of the country besePTember 2011 8 The Pellucid PersPecTive http://www.clubcar.com http://www.clubcar.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Pellucid Perspective - September 2011

The Pellucid Perspective - September 2011
Contents
The China syndrome
Shift happens: The impact of Hispanic growth on local golf markets
Promoting rounds at rate card — a novel concept?
Promoting rounds at rate card — a novel concept?
There’s golf in them thar’ (sand) hills
August weather impact, July utilization
Seattle, WA Core Business Statistical Area (CBSA)
Seattle, WA Core Business Statistical Area (CBSA)
The long and the short of it

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