First Reaction: Wild Spring Dunes

It’s beginning to feel like deja vu at this point, a good kind of deja vu. Michael Keiser Jr. has “opened” another premier public golf getaway in East Texas. Roughly equidistant from Dallas and Houston, Wild Spring Dunes is slated for a grand opening in the Fall of 2026, but has begun preview play on holes one through eight. This Tom Doak design dances through the pine forest, rolling hills, and spring-fed creeks while boasting excellent sandy soils, which have become a cornerstone for Keiser’s developments. The current master plan is to add a Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw 18-hole design, which has already been routed, as well as a short course. With over 2,400 acres of land, one can reasonably assume there may be even more golf down the road. Last week, Andy Johnson and I toured all 18 holes for a few days. Here’s what we saw.

The aesthetics of this region’s topography and environment immediately reminded us of the Carolina Sandhills and Pinehurst region. Scrubby exposed sand alongside prairie grasses, spiky yuccas, and low ground cover make for a pleasant, naturalized rough. In turn, the golf holes seamlessly blend into the surrounding landscape. As for the routing, it's two loops. You start atop a prominent hill that’s been nicknamed Mt. Baldy and play through the trees for the first three holes. The fourth, fifth, and sixth sit in a more open, expansive space with fewer trees, and the tree-lined eighth guides you back to the base of Mt. Baldy. The back nine provides a similar looping journey but incorporates wonderful meandering creeks as well as dramatic ravines. This inward nine feels a bit more adventurous as you play through tree-lined holes before opening up to the spacious triangle of holes in 12, 13, and 14, then finally hiking up and down a few sizable ridgelines and back to the base of Mt. Baldy. Doak and Co., per usual, built an impressive golf course that feels symbiotic to the landscape and still provides flair and creativity, which will only get better as it matures.

As we made the short hike up the ridge from 14 green to 15 tee, something hit me: I had literally been at all four active Keiser golf properties in 2025, all of which feature designs from Coore and Crenshaw and Tom Doak. In fact, 13 of the 18 Keiser-led courses built or planned to be built are designed by these architects, yet each is entirely fresh and truly original. It’s not revolutionary to say, but Coore and Crenshaw, as well as Doak, are so talented at extracting the essence of each local environment while producing some of the best golf courses in the United States. Each property is the epitome of its region. This concept of propping up the native environment to be the defining aspect of not only each course, but the entire resort, is easy to theorize yet difficult to execute. Wild Spring Dunes has already accomplished this in its infancy.

Mike Keiser, Michael Keiser Jr., Doak, Coore, and Crenshaw will go down in history as some of the most influential people in public golf development. I think many of us are failing to fully recognize the profound greatness unfolding before our eyes.