Pacific Dunes Review

Pacific Dunes changed what American golf architecture thinks it is for. Doak routed it through dunes that were already there and along a bluff a hundred feet above the Pacific, moved almost nothing, and let the ground decide where holes went rather than the other way around. The scorecard that falls out of it would never survive a committee: a par seventy one with four par threes on the back nine, two drivable par fours and a tenth hole that plays straight at the ocean.

It works completely. Greens sit in natural hollows and on natural shelves, gorse and wind do the defending, and the fairways are wide enough that a poor drive is playable and pinched in the right places so a good one is rewarded. The set of short par fours is the best on the continent. Conditioning is firm fescue kept fast and brown rather than green, which is the correct way to present links turf and looks neglected to anyone expecting resort lushness.

Scenery at the fourth and the thirteenth is as good as the game offers. The value grade is the only one that sits under the rest, and the reason is access rather than architecture. Walking is compulsory, a caddie is close to it, the peak summer fee for resort guests runs into the high three hundreds, and you have to fly to a small Oregon town and stay there to play at all, so this is a trip rather than an afternoon. Every serious golfer should see this one once.