Design Notebook: Old Shores Shows the New Keiser Ethos

Howdy, Fried Egg Golf Club members, and welcome back to Design Notebook, your exclusive update on happenings in the world of golf architecture.

This edition ventures to the Florida Panhandle, where development is underway on a Dream Golf mega-complex as well as an accessible destination golf club. (That’s right, I just used the phrase “accessible destination golf club.” Read on to find out what it means.)

First, though, let’s run through the biggest pieces of golf architecture news from the past few weeks:

→ Old Shores ramps up: The new Dream Golf resort in Vernon, Florida, broke ground on a Tom Doak-designed 18-hole golf course and announced plans for lodging, amenities, and multiple additional courses. Over the next several years, Old Shores will introduce a second 18-holer designed by Brian Schneider, a 12-hole “precision course,” a nine-hole regulation layout, and a par-3 course, all of which will radiate out from a walkable village featuring hotels, homes, and restaurants. I’ll get into what these plans suggest about the evolution of the Dream Golf model below.

→ Mr. Kidd goes to Washington (State): River Ranch Golf Resort in Pasco, Washington, went public with plans for an 18-hole golf course designed by David McLay Kidd. The course will occupy a photogenic setting: high cliffs above the Snake River. Kidd’s crew started preliminary shaping late last year, and the resort is hoping for a fall 2027 or spring 2028 opening. River Ranch is three hours south of Gamble Sands, which boasts three Kidd-designed courses.

→ The NLT seeks greener pastures: The National Links Trust, recently ejected from its lease to operate and improve the three municipal golf courses of Washington, D.C., by the Trump administration, announced a partnership with Port Townsend Golf Park in Port Townsend, Washington. NLT co-founder Mike McCartin will head up efforts to rehabilitate the century-plus-old course and install a new community putting green.

→ Johnson completes King’s North reno: the Arnold Palmer-designed King’s North at Myrtle Beach National Golf Club reopened after a multi-year renovation by Brandon Johnson, a former Palmer associate. Johnson’s work involved the complete reshaping of what had become a rather dated-looking set of bunkers and greens.

→ Blasi teases new Wisconsin destination: Jay Blasi, the architect behind the recent Golden Gate Park and Poppy Ridge transformations, revealed in his year-in-review mailer that he will be designing a course called The Sand Mine in western Wisconsin.
→ New Maggie Hathaway to be unveiled soon: After a pro bono overhaul by Gil Hanse and Tommy Naccarato, Maggie Hathaway Golf Course, a beloved nine-hole par-3 course in Los Angeles, is eyeing a grand reopening on March 27. I should have mentioned this project in my roundup of public-course projects last month — it’s a big one for the L.A. area. Here’s a glimpse of the reimagined course, courtesy of Naccarato:

Old Shores and Dream Golf 2.0

“Dream Golf,” both as an idea and a company, is still closely associated with Bandon Dunes, the golf resort Mike Keiser founded on a stretch of Oregon coastline in 1999. But as the recently released plans for Old Shores make clear, the Dream Golf model has shifted in the past quarter century.

Bandon Dunes was a rebuke to high-end golf course development of the 1980s and 90s. It was proudly remote — four-and-a-half hours from the nearest major city, not linked to any preexisting tourist infrastructure. The quality of the land was the sole justification for the resort’s location. (“If you build it, they will come.”) The courses were rugged and simple, inspired by Old World links courses and consciously devoid of the usual American signifiers of luxury. The accommodations were similarly spartan, though functional and pleasant. And Keiser insisted to anyone who would listen that Bandon Dunes would never be in the real estate game. This was a sicko’s getaway. A place to obsess over golf.

The result, intentional or not, was that Bandon Dunes became almost exclusively a buddies’-trip destination. It didn’t offer much for one’s kids or non-golfing spouse.

In the ensuing years, Barnbougle Dunes in Tasmania and Cabot Cape Breton in Nova Scotia, both backed by Keiser’s money but not owned outright by his company, followed in a similar vein. But with the second Dream Golf destination, Wisconsin’s Sand Valley, the model started to evolve.

Keiser’s sons, Michael and Chris, stepped in to manage the resort, and their approach diverged in a few ways from their dad’s. They advertised alternative activities like kayaking in the summer and sledding in the winter. They added a tennis center and a variety of lodging options. They even began to sell real estate. Gradually, Sand Valley became a viable family destination, and to this end, the resort’s relative proximity to three big metropolitan areas was important. Michael and Chris wanted to attract repeat business from the suburbs of Chicago, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Milwaukee.

The Keiser sons have also shown themselves more open than their father to experimentation in golf architecture. While brilliant, the golf offering at Bandon Dunes is fairly conventional in structure: five 18-hole regulation courses and a pair of par-3 courses. At Sand Valley, you’ll find a low-score-generating roller coaster ride (Mammoth Dunes), a 19-hole par-3 course with wild greens (The Sandbox), a par-68 sporting layout (Sedge Valley), an eerily precise reproduction of a lost Golden Age design (The Lido), and a 12-hole “afternoon course” (The Commons). This diversity of golf experiences suits the resort’s broad appeal to the different members of a family.

In their plans for Old Shores, Michael and Chris have formalized this model. There is a preplanned, walkable village, designed to accommodate golfers and non-golfers alike. There are lakes and creeks well-suited to water sports. There are golf courses of all shapes and sizes, each with a clear elevator pitch. And there are several cities — Tallahassee, Mobile, Montgomery, Columbus, Birmingham, Jacksonville, Atlanta — within a four-and-a-half hour drive.

This is Dream Golf 2.0: off the beaten track but not remote, golf-centric but not golf-only, comfortable but not fancy, and ready to be integrated into a family’s annual routine.

I must admit — as a middle-class, middle-aged dad — I want one near me.

Old Charlie Seeks a New Way

About 30 minutes from Old Shores, initial routing work has begun at a destination club called Old Charlie. The developers, Cliff McKinney and Eddie Barrett, have hired Keith Rhebb and Riley Johns to build an 18-hole course on a forested site five miles south of the small town of Ponce de Leon. Rhebb and Johns are longtime associates of Coore & Crenshaw who gained mainstream recognition in 2016 with an impressive, low-cost transformation of Winter Park Golf Course. Old Charlie will be their first regulation new build.

The 2020s have been overloaded with new, far-flung private clubs trying to be the next Sand Hills or Ohoopee. But Old Charlie stands out for its effort to balance clubbiness with accessibility. I’ll let the membership packet describe the model:

“Regular membership to Old Charlie is unique in the world of golf, but fairly easy to understand. You join by purchasing one or more reservations. One reservation is good for one annual round for one person. If you buy eight reservations, for example, that gets you a guaranteed two-day vacation for your foursome every year. Members pay a reservation fee ($500-$1,200 per reservation) up front, plus annual dues each year. Annual dues per reservation are $150 and cover unlimited golf on the days you visit. Per person, the foursome example above costs less than $2,500 up front and $300 per year.”

In other words, anyone can join. There is no application process. To purchase a reservation and pay the annual dues is to be a member of Old Charlie. And the pricing is roughly on par with that of Dream Golf and Cabot resorts.

At the same time, the club will attempt to offer an Ohoopee-style experience by restricting daily capacity to 72 players. Here’s the packet again:

“The number is by design. Eighteen groups, more or less. It means that even if everyone is here and even if everyone is out on the big course, you’re still not likely to see more than one group on a hole at a time. To us, that’s a critical piece of what will make Old Charlie special. It allows for the kind of freedom that doesn’t exist in many places since the post-COVID golf boom, and certainly isn’t available at the big resorts. Play a scramble with six in the group. Get out for an emergency nine. Play a round in bare feet with nothing but a 7-iron and a putter.”

This is not dissimilar from the all-day-pass system pioneered by Sweetens Cove, but the annual dues establish a degree of continuity in membership, and the capacity restriction provides a feeling of exclusivity.

It’s an intriguing concept for a golf club. As I understand it, the selling point is resort-like access to a club-like experience — or, put another way, a Fried Egg Golf event with a permanent site.

McKinney and Barrett still need to sort out county permits, but the property is free of major wetlands and zoned correctly for golf development. They hope to be up and running by 2028.

A Course We Photogrpahed Recently

Wild Spring Dunes (Mt. Enterprise, TX)—designed by Tom Doak, set to open in fall 2026

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Underlined and Starred

“After all, golf is, or should be, a game of adventure as opposed to an examination of stroke production, and that is why educated golfers prefer courses such as St. Andrews, Woking, and Pulborough.” -Tom Simpson

Have a topic or question you'd like discussed in Design Notebook? Contact Garrett at garrett@thefriedegg.com.