Design Notebook: New Course Openings in 2024

Greetings and welcome back to Design Notebook, where we are “virtually certain” that Seth Raynor would have wanted the hospitality tents at Waialae CC to play as OB.

In this issue, Garrett discusses eight brand-new golf courses he’d like to visit in 2024. We also give some brief thoughts on Golf Digest’s semantically imaginative “Best New Course” awards.

Eight new builds in the U.S. that I’m tracking this year

There are reasons to be critical of or pessimistic about the ongoing surge in American golf development. Because of rising construction costs, recently built public courses are unlikely to offer affordable green fees. For the same reason, not many new golf facilities will pursue a daily-fee model; far more will be high-dollar resorts or private clubs. Finally, the current uptick in golf construction is mostly a regional phenomenon, concentrated in exurban or rural areas outside of growing cities in Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, and Texas. Boom times have not yet—and may never—come to the West Coast and New England.

In this column, though, I’ll look on the bright side of life, as unnatural as that might be for my skeptical brain. There’s plenty to celebrate as the golf course industry recovers from its post-Recession slump. In 2024, a couple dozen new courses will open in the U.S., and most won’t be part of real-estate developments. Talented architects who have spent their early careers working as shapers and associates are getting their shots at solo designs. The artform of golf architecture is moving forward.

Below, in approximate chronological order, are eight U.S. course openings—five public and three private—that I’ll keep an eye on this year. And since I’m cosplaying an optimist today, I’ll set a goal of seeing six of them before 2025 arrives.

Winter/spring 2024 openings:

Crossroads (Palmetto Bluff, SC)

A private residential community north of Savannah and close to Hilton Head Island, Palmetto Bluff is already home to a well-regarded Jack Nicklaus design in May River Golf Club. The development’s new ownership has now added Crossroads, a reversible nine built by King-Collins. Preview play started last fall, and opening day is tomorrow, January 17. The design appears to be an experiment in extracting as much golf as possible from a tiny plot of land. Packed into a 60-acre site, King-Collins’s holes can be played in two directions, and members will be encouraged to make up their own cross-country routings during quiet hours. A quasi-Sheep Ranch in the Lowcountry.

King-Collins's 2022 plan for Palmetto Bluff

Pinehurst No. 10 (Pinehurst, NC)

Over the past year, we’ve given Club TFE members numerous updates on the progress at Tom Doak’s No. 10 course, from the announcement of the project last January to our own visit to the site in October, when we interviewed lead associate Angela Moser. The land is unusually dramatic for the Pinehurst area, but Doak’s design upholds the principles of strategy and challenge that Donald Ross’s work at the resort has long embodied. The course is scheduled to open on April 3, a little over two months before U.S. Open chaos descends on the Carolina Sandhills.

Shorty’s (Bandon, OR)

South of Bandon Preserve and west of Bandon Trails, this 19-hole par-3 course will debut on May 2. The property is similar to Preserve’s—a collection of choppy dunes that couldn’t have accommodated regulation-size golf holes. Shorty’s is the work of Whitman, Axland & Cutten, a recently formed firm consisting of architects Rod Whitman, Dave Axland, and Keith Cutten. Whitman and Axland have two of the deepest design-build résumés in the industry. Whitman, a product of the Pete Dye-Bill Coore associate tree, is best known for his solo work at Cabot Links, where Axland served as project manager and Cutten as lead shaper. Axland is a longtime Coore & Crenshaw construction supervisor as well as the co-designer of Wild Horse and Bayside in Nebraska, two of the best affordable public courses in the country. Cutten, the youngest of the trio, has spent two decades working for Whitman and is the author of the ambitious book The Evolution of Golf Course Design. Shorty’s will be the first design that Whitman, Axland & Cutten have completed as an official firm, and Cabot Pacific, the inaugural course at Cabot Revelstoke in alpine British Columbia, will likely be the second. Not a bad start.

A high view of Shorty's (photo credit: Bandon Dunes)

Sedge Valley (Nekoosa, WI)

This is another project we monitored closely in 2023, partly because three of us—me, Cameron Hurdus, and Matt Rouches—spent several days at Sand Valley last summer filming our documentary on the resort’s turf operation. Crafted by Tom Doak and on-site boss Eric Iverson, Sedge Valley is something new in the Keiser Cinematic Universe: a sporty par-68 layout that darts in and out of tight canyons, often favoring small features and intimate settings. While Sedge’s fairways are plenty wide, Doak and Iverson’s frequent use of hog’s-back landing zones will place a premium on driving accuracy not usually associated with the Dream Golf brand. The course opens to the public in May.

Summer/fall 2024 openings:

GrayBull Golf Club (Maxwell, NE)

A Dormie Network club expected to debut in late summer, this David McLay Kidd design joins a formidable chain of golf courses along Nebraska’s I-80 corridor, which defines the southern border of the famed Sandhills region. GrayBull is 40 minutes west of Wild Horse, an hour and a half east of Bayside, and an hour and 15 minutes south of Sand Hills and Dismal River. This central location in one of America’s golf meccas may be a benefit for Dormie’s frequent-flying clientele but will also set a high bar for GrayBull’s quality. The land, at least, appears to be up to snuff, judging from the available photos.

Cabot Citrus Farms (Brooksville, FL)

Get ready for a lot of Cabot Citrus Farms content this year, both from us and from our friends in the golf media. Cabot CEO Ben Cowan-Dewar swung for the fences in rehabbing this public-access complex north of Tampa, Florida, formerly known as World Woods. Instead of simply sprucing up the property’s two well-liked Tom Fazio designs, Cowan-Dewar gave architects Kyle Franz and Mike Nuzzo free rein to pursue their own fancies. The result will be four courses: Karoo, designed by Franz and sitting on the footprint of Fazio’s old Pine Barrens course; The Roost, co-designed by Franz and Nuzzo and replacing Fazio’s Rolling Oaks; and two unconventional courses built by Nuzzo: The Squeeze, a 10-hole, 2,957-yard layout; and The Wedge, an 11-hole par-3 course nestled within the Squeeze’s routing. Yes, it’s all a bit chaotic, but in a charming way. Karoo, The Squeeze, and The Wedge have begun to host limited preview play while Nuzzo’s team wraps up The Roost. The resort is targeting an October grand opening.

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Warmouth Sands Golf Course (Vidalia, GA)

Over the past few years, the small town of Vidalia, best known for its eponymous sweet onions, has become the private-jet landing spot of choice for members of nearby Ohoopee Match Club. Sensing an opportunity to jump-start the area’s golf industry, a group of locals formed the Sweet Onion Golf Authority to fund the construction of a new municipal course. They made a smart hire in Mike Young, the designer and owner of the excellent Fields Golf Club in LaGrange, Georgia, and a proponent of affordable golf. Warmouth Sands, named for a fish commonly found in the area’s creeks, is scheduled to open in late October.

A plan for Mike Young's Warmouth Sands project

Fall Line Club (Butler, GA)

This new destination club in Georgia has not sought publicity and will remain very private, but its combination of land (pine-studded sand hills), designer (the Aussie firm OCM, headed up by Geoff Ogilvy, Mike Cocking, and Ashley Mead), and concept (two 18-hole courses, one inspired by the English heathlands and the other by the Australian Sandbelt) is compelling enough to warrant some coverage. The heathland-style East course started hosting preview play last fall, and the Sandbelt-like West course is half done and will likely open for preview rounds in October. An OCM-designed short course is also in the works, likely to be built between March and July of this year. Between the Fall Line project and the reopening of Medinah’s Course 3, 2024 is shaping up to be a big year for OCM. I hope they get a high-profile public-access commission in the States soon.

I’ve also set up Google alerts for…

A new private club in Luling, Texas—approximately equidistant from Austin and San Antonio—where Kyle Franz and Mike Koprowski are finishing an 18-hole design on a ravine-striped property.

Broomsedge, another Franz-Koprowski joint, this one outside of Columbia, South Carolina. As Andy reported last November, the club recently received an infusion of cash, allowing Franz and Koprowski to finish their design. Although private, Broomsedge intends to give regular access to non-members.

Gil Hanse’s Upper Course at the Golf Club of Tennessee, which has been shaped and grassed, and is visible in Google Earth imagery from last November. The Nashville-area club has been tight-lipped about the project, but in 2020 club president David Ingram told local reporters that he hopes the 36-hole facility will attract big-time amateur events.

An aerial view of the new Upper Course at the Golf Club of Tennessee (Google Earth)

Tom Doak’s design at Childress Hall, a destination club in the West Texas sand dunes that plans to start construction on a second 18 by Gil Hanse later this year. Doak says his course could be playable by the end of 2024.

7 Mile Beach. This stunning-looking duneland design by Mike Clayon and Mike DeVries is in Tasmania; otherwise, I certainly would have included it in the U.S.-centric list above. I think it’s the most exciting golf construction project in the world right now. -Garrett Morrison

Chocolate drops

News and notes from the golf course industry…

Golf Digest released its annual “Best New” feature this past weekend. The Lido won the “Best New Public Course” prize in spite of being neither public nor, strictly speaking, new. Ladera Golf Club, a Gil Hanse design in Thermal, California, took “Best New Private Course” honors. Also feted by Golf Digest’s raters were Tyler Rae and Kyle Franz for their historically informed project at Lookout Mountain (“Best New Renovation”) and Gil Hanse for his… historically informed project at Lake Merced (“Best New Transformation”). Where does one draw the line between “renovation” and “transformation”? Don’t ask us.

For the record, Fried Egg Golf considers The Park, an actual public course, the best new public course of 2023—though, come to think of it, Gil Hanse’s work there was technically a “transformation” of an existing facility rather than a new build. Boy, all of this terminology gets confusing! Anyway, for best new private course, we’d lean toward Brian Schneider and Blake Conant’s Old Barnwell, which went unlisted by Golf Digest because not enough raters saw it before the end of the year. To be fair, we haven’t yet visited Ladera.

Did Fried Egg Golf’s Matt Rouches and Cameron Hurdus just invent the next great template hole? It’s not for us to say. (But yes.)

Sketches by Matt Rouches

A course we photographed recently

Jonathan’s Landing Golf Club—Match Course at Old Trail (Jupiter, FL)—designed by Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner, opened in 2021

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Quotable

“We don’t want our holes to look like golf holes. They should look like landscapes which just happen to include a golf hole.” –Bill Coore