The Dunes Club (9 holes, private)

New Buffalo, MI

   #6

1991, Dick Nugent
Back 6984, 74.7, 142, 72
Middle 6566, 73.7, 138, 72
Front 6250, 72.6, 136, 72
Fees: ~$150!!!

"The best 9 hole course in the country." -Ron Whitten, Senior Golf Digest Course Editor

Fat Guy Note:  I know none of us schmos will ever get the chance to play this private gem, but the story of how The Dunes Club got built is cool enough for a quick read.

Per T&L Golf:
This was the trial entry into golf course ownership of Mike Keiser, the 55-year-old Chicago recycled greeting card magnate who wanted to blow his fortune creating "golf the way it was meant to be".  After this he put up Bandon Dunes and Pacific Dunes in Bandon, Oregon, already two of the top rated courses in the country if not the world.

From Dream Golf- The Making Of Bandon Dunes:  Mike Keiser's inspiration for building The Dunes Club was his unabashed love for Pine Valley and the story of George Crump's passionate dream that made the best course in the world a reality, but it took a bit of kharma to sneak up on Keiser first.  The property on which The Dunes Club now sits is across the street from a summer home he had just bought in a new subdivision in lakeside New Buffalo, when building a course was just a vague fantasy of his and he was entering Golf Digest's Amateur Architect contests.  Keiser heard that a development company was trying to buy the 60-acre parcel across the street from his summer house to put up condos, the thought of which sickened Mike.  He knew the realtor, who approached him about buying the land when the sale to the development company ran into some snags.  Keiser was blown away by how "cheap" the land was ($305,000), and bought it for cash.  He began taking nature hikes with his family on the land, often taking a golf club along and playing a few shots of wilderness golf.  He couldn't help but notice the land resembled the hilly wooded nooks and crannies of Pine Valley, the lakeside soil resembled the sandy firm terra firma he'd discovered on a golf trip to Ireland, and he couldn't help but begin to imagine golf holes along the ridges of the hills. 

Fantasy slowly morphed into obsession for Mike (and he could afford it).  So later, when an adjacent 30-acre parcel became available, Keiser snapped it up, giving him enough land to build 9 holes.  He hired architect Dick Nugent (who shared Keiser's passion for old school golf) to design it on a handshake, and Keiser had some serious input into the design.  Mike never envisioned the course as his own private playground, but instead sought to share it with an informal, convivial membership like the ones he'd met in Ireland.  He also gave zero thought to how he would sell memberships, how much they would cost, or even how they'd find enough caddies to work the place in a small hamlet like New Buffalo.

The course they built has been called the best 9-holer in the country by some of the biggest names in golf, and has been ranked as high as #77 in Golf Digest's Top 100, and it's 8th hole has been revered on many serious Best 18 Holes lists.  The Dunes Club can be mentioned in the same sentence with it's inspiration without blushing.  The whole place has an air of privacy, almost of secrecy.  There is not so much a plaque at the entrance.  You could drive past it 100 times and never realize one of America's best courses was just up the paved drive.  Each hole is heavily wooded and feels like a world unto itself.  The varied tee boxes aren't so much boxes as they are large, multitiered areas of closely mown turf, some of them fantastically contoured, each offering a different distance, elevation, and angle of attack.  There are no tee markers.  The local rule is that the winner of the previous hole picks the teeing ground, like a game of HORSE.  There are at least 3 waste areas that could pass as a reasonable proximation of Pine Valley's Hell's Half Acre.  Most holes are closely bordered by fescue, and Keiser fought with Nugent to leave overhanging tree branches which intentionally squeeze fairway angles on a few approaches. 

 #4

This is position golf at it's finest, and you'll do well to listen to your knowledgeable caddie.  The craziest part?  They built the thing for less than $1 million, an unheard-of lowly sum for even a 9-holer these days, let alone a masterpiece.

Once the course was finished and the grass grown in, there was no clubhouse, only a maintenance road for access, and only one building on the property--the maintenance shed.  One day a couple neighbors, Chicagoans who had summer places in New Buffalo, turned up to take a look at what was going on behind the fence.  They were golfers, and loved what they saw.  Keiser more or less made up a membership fee number on the spot, they plopped down their money, and The Dunes Club had it's first two members, who remain good friends of Keiser's. 

From there, word spread through the golf world like wildfire.  When Golf Digest's pre-emminent course writer Ron Whitten showed up to review the place not too much later, he had to climb the fence to play because there was no staff in place.  Keiser then hired a former local state cop for a pro, who knew plenty of locals to start one of the best caddie programs in the country, and now they have 40 full-and-part time loopers who know the place like the back of their hand.

The clubhouse is a tiny, charming, white-shingled thing, serving an unfussy menu with burgers and bratwurst as main features. The pro shop is the size of a respectable walk-in closet. The locker room is an alcove with a shoe rack and two changing rooms with small, voluminous showers done in tile hand-picked by Keiser.  This is the kind of place where famous Chicagoans (think Jordan, Ditka, and Daly) come to hide.

Not bad for a neophyte course developer, huh? 

Golf.com Review: This 9-hole course provides different tee boxes for each hole in order to create the feeling that you're playing twenty-seven different holes. Tee markers are only put out for competitions or outings. Otherwise, the local rule is that the winner of the previous hole gets to decide from where the next hole is played. This is a links-style course with narrow fairways bordered by a standard cut of rough and some trees that can affect your shots. The terrain is rolling, featuring many sand dunes that can affect your shots. The signature hole is #8, a 513-yard, par 5, requiring a tee shot over water. Caddies are mandatory.