Design Notebook: Dream Golf Announces Old Shores

Welcome back to Design Notebook, where we’re taking a slightly different approach this week. Rather than fleshing out one or two longish segments and tossing in some newsy odds and ends, I’m going to touch on a variety of topics in a quicker, more casual manner. In other words, this one will be more like an actual notebook entry.

Let me know what you think of the format. We’re always trying to find new and better ways of doing things here in Club TFE.

→ The big golf course industry news of the past couple of weeks became official on Friday: Dream Golf is headed to the Florida Panhandle. The company behind Bandon Dunes and Sand Valley announced that the Old Shores resort will be located about 30 miles north of the Panama City airport, and that Tom Doak will design its first 18-hole course. The announcement comes two weeks after the Washington County board of commissioners approved a development order for the project.

“The land just makes you want to get to the next bend or over the next hill,” said Dream Golf’s Michael Keiser in a press release. “There is so much variety—it’s hard to believe you could experience so many environments in one place. Every time I visit, I discover a side I had never seen before.”

Old Shores Site Plan. (Photo: Dream Golf)

No timeline is available for the project yet, but Dream Golf has been fleet of foot lately. Stay tuned.

→ Heading up the Old Shores development are Michael and Chris Keiser, sons of Bandon Dunes founder Mike Keiser. The Keiser sons are also the driving force behind Dream Golf’s under-construction projects at Rodeo Dunes in Colorado and Wild Spring Dunes in eastern Texas. Like Ben Cowan-Dewar of Cabot, they have been expanding their footprint in the destination-golf market with a speed that would have been unimaginable in the 2010s. The post-pandemic golf surge (I hesitate to call it either a “boom” or a “bubble”—yet) is real, and it’s not showing any signs of fatigue.

In their latest projects, as well as in their recent additions of Sand Valley, Michael and Chris Keiser have adhered to many aspects of their father’s development philosophy while tweaking some others. All of the Keisers share a predilection for sandy sites, naturalistic golf course design, and architects—chiefly Coore & Crenshaw and Tom Doak—with a knack for blending built features into the preexisting lay of the land. At the same time, Michael and Chris have shown a willingness to venture beyond the golf-only model that their father’s Bandon Dunes popularized. Sand Valley, for instance, offers tennis, fat-tire biking, fishing, kayaking, and an array of real-estate options. It also features a member club in The Lido, which I hear has been a notable financial success.

MORE: One Thing About Every Hole at The Lido

So at new Dream Golf destinations, expect more experimentation with alternative activities, amenities, and models.

→ Perhaps to their mild chagrin, the Keisers were not the first to reveal the Old Shores news to the general public. Golf writer and Tallahassee resident Jay Revell tweeted on October 21 about the approval of the development order. Then, in an October 27 story for The Golfers Journal featuring code-named anonymous informants, he reported Tom Doak’s involvement. Revell has been pursuing this scoop for nearly two years. Who says journalism is dead?

→ 2024 has been a golden year for Tom Doak. In addition to nabbing jobs at next-gen Keiser resorts Old Shores and Wild Spring Dunes, he has unveiled new builds at Sedge Valley and Pinehurst No. 10, along with a remixed version of his first-ever design at High Pointe in Michigan. Earlier this year, he finished work at Sandglass in Martin County, Florida, and Childress Hall in western Texas, both of which could open for preview play before the end of the year. Meanwhile, his teams have been busy shaping features at Cabot Highlands in Scotland and Punta Brava in Baja California; those courses appear to be on track for 2025 debuts. Also likely to wrap up next year: Doak’s renovation of his mentor Pete Dye’s design at Crooked Stick Golf Club in Indiana.

Thirty-five years into his career as a solo architect, Tom Doak is doing more varied and interesting work than ever.

→ I was tipped off last week to this video, which contains hole-by-hole flyovers of Gil Hanse’s recently opened Upper Course at the Golf Club of Tennessee. Some initial observations (tentative ones, since you can tell only so much from aerial footage):

1. The land is mountainous, but since most of the holes appear to run along the top of a single, winding ridge, the course seems to be decently walkable. Historical Google Earth aerials indicate that Hanse’s routing basically follows a long-standing hiking trail. Smart.

2. I like the frequent use of smallish greens surrounded by ample short grass. This should allow for a lot of ground-game options, assuming the turf conditions are firm. It may also mitigate the difficulty of what’s likely to be an exacting course from tee to green.

3. Nos. 5, 10, 13, and 14 are an attractive quartet of par 3.5s.

4. The eighth hole, a snaking par 5 with diagonal carry hazards on the tee and second shots, also catches my eye. Hanse has an affinity for par-5 designs out of A.W. Tillinghast’s playbook, and this one puts me in mind of the fourth hole at Bethpage Black.

5. Photographers are going to love the par-3 seventh and 17th holes. And shout-out to the cheeky Maxwell roll in the middle of the seventh green.

6. I see some in-play cart paths, particularly on Nos. 3 and 11, but those might have been inevitable given the spatial limitations of the ridgetop setting.

→ A few social updates:

Tyler Rae’s team has broken ground on a greens restoration at St. David’s Golf Club, a Donald Ross design in Wayne, Pennsylvania.

Sharon Heights Golf and Country Club in Menlo Park, California, has reopened after a Todd Eckenrode redesign.

Scott Hoffmann, designer of Lost Rail Golf Club in Nebraska and product of the Fazio tree, posted some photos of his in-progress design at Mapletøn Golf Club in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

A Course We Photographed Recently

Southampton Golf Club (Southampton, N.Y.) — designed by Seth Raynor in 1925, restored by Brian Silva in 2010

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Quotable

“If [greens are maintained at speeds faster than 11 feet on the Stimpmeter], no architect in their right mind can build any contour or character into their greens. When you take contour out of the greens and speed them up, you only make the game easier for the average-putting Tour pro, and harder for the club player. There is much more skill required in putting slower, undulating, and grainy greens than there is in putting flat ones that are fast.

“So at some point we are going to have to figure out what we really want from our golf courses. Do we want interesting tests of skill with lots of character and perhaps a little grain on the greens? Or do we want level but slick putting surfaces that only make the game less interesting?” – Pete Dye