When
19th-century Scots resolved to build golf courses at secluded outposts like
Machrihanish and Dornoch, they never bothered with feasibility studies. The land
itself, however remote, trumped practical concerns and cried out: “I am a superb
golf course waiting to happen. Build me, and who cares whether they come or
not.”
A
similar siren call is being heard today in America’s upper Midwest, where
deep-pocketed developers are snapping up enormous swaths of ground too
compelling to ignore. In turn, they have issued their own message—“demographics
be damned”—because no consultant would recommend the building of fancy private
clubs to serve Mullen, Nebraska, home to Sand Hills Golf Club, or Agar, South
Dakota, site of the dazzling new Sutton Bay Club.
It
was the land that made Sutton Bay worth building. Why else do such a thing on
the high plains of South Dakota, where the golf season is short, hay bales
outnumber golfers 100,000 to 1, and commercial air access means riding a
turboprop to some rural air field followed by another 90 minutes in a rental
car?
Ground
was broken at Sutton Bay in September 2001, and the layout debuted in spring of
2003. No one is quite ready to claim Graham Marsh’s stunning design one-ups its
predecessor in the Remote Upper Midwest Dream Links category. But Sutton Bay,
even at just a year old, does bear up remarkably well in comparison to Sand
Hills, not to mention others on the short list of Great American Links. It’s
that good.
In
some respects Sutton Bay has even improved on the formula. Bill Coore and Ben
Crenshaw’s design at Sand Hills features returning nines, while Sutton Bay is a
more authentic out-and-back routing in which the 9th green and 10th tee are
nestled right up against a boundary fence. Its other leg up is the presence of
Lake Oahe, a portion of the Missouri River dammed in the 1960s and visible from
all 18 holes. Technically a golf course doesn’t need the sea or any other body
of water to be authentically “linksy”—after all, Sand Hills is bone dry—but
let’s be honest: It’s a nice plus.
All
the elements are present here: random dunes that obscure the line of play,
firm-and-fast turf conditions and howling winds. Marsh routed the longer front
nine with a prevailing breeze that comes in handy on its three par 5s, the
shortest of which measures 605 yards. Catch this course on a day when the wind
does a 180, and the front side is downright Sisyphean.
Yet
with a prevailing wind, the opening nine holes are a joyful frolic down wide,
undulating fairways bounded by ball-eating fescues. Uphill (the stern par-4 3rd)
and downhill (the waterslide par-4 7th), the holes tumble this way and that,
skirting massive blow-out bunkers on their way to enormous, undulating greens
that are smartly angled and bunkered so that even the most straightforward
approach requires significant thought.
The
back nine plays higher on the hillside, and it’s this elevation that gives the
inward nine its own character. Sure, the dunes over which one must drive at 10
and 12 serve notice that one is still playing a quirk-strewn links, but massive
drops at 13 (a 214-yard par 3) and 18 (where the tee sits atop a mesa) give
Sutton Bay the drama and long views we don’t normally associate with a sea-level
links.
During
more than 100 site visits, Marsh, who worked without plans, tried to give the
course as natural a look as he could, and nobody knows how much earth his team
moved. We didn’t even try to quantify it,” Marsh says. “Gut if I had to put a
number on it, I’d say no more than 100,000 cubic yards. But hopefully it doesn’t
look as though we moved that much.”
