For the past couple of years, I have spent hours talking to David McLay Kidd about the GrayBull track he has been building in the Nebraska Sandhills. During that stretch, I have also discussed the project at length with some of his associates and even spent a couple of days in the summer of 2023 touring the course site while it was under construction. So, I was understandably amped when the time finally arrived this past Labor Day weekend to play the latest addition to Kidd’s impressive oeuvre – and do so with the nearly 60-year-old Scot only a couple weeks after its formal opening.
Part of that enthusiasm came from the chance to see and assess the latest creation of an architect who by his own admission has never been more at peace with his work. And the fact that I had been closely following the development of GrayBull ever since Kidd broke ground on the property in June 2022 only added to the anticipation.
Then, there was my deep affection for this region, which is a 20,000-square-mile island that literally floats on top of a massive aquifer. For one thing, the Nebraska Sandhills possess some of the best golf terrain on the planet, with hundreds of feet of sandy soil sitting below a layer of very fertile organic matter. I am also enthralled by the aura that emanates from the expanses of rumpled, grassy hills populated in the places with herds of wild horses and Black Angus cows and an almost haunting quiet that is broken only occasionally by the clangs of an Aermotor windmill pumping water from the ground.
I arrived in this town of 312 residents on a Friday afternoon, turning off Interstate 80 and then driving 12 miles north to the GrayBull entrance on a two-lane blacktop where the shoulders are dusted with sand. And by the time I departed Monday morning, having played a couple of rounds with Kidd on what is the seventh course in the Dormie Network portfolio – and the first built from the ground up – I had determined that GrayBull was one of the best layouts he has ever fashioned. I even went so far as to tell friends I called on my way back to the Omaha airport that it might be Kidd’s finest work ever.
To be sure, the par-72 inland links, which is located on roughly 1,800 acres and sits at an elevation of 3,000 feet, is not endowed with the knee-weakening water views of Bandon Dunes, the course that launched the architect’s career when it opened on the south Oregon coast more than a quarter century ago.
But GrayBull has all the other elements. Well-contoured ground full of hillocks and hollows. Winds that blow often and from different directions day-to-day. Deft bunkering, whether in or along the fescue fairways or around the greens, which employ an older strain of grass called Bent 007. And run-off areas that test golfers’ short-game skills while also providing a good chance of salvaging bogey, or even making par, if they miss the putting surfaces with their approaches.
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