Chocolate Drop: More Golf Comes to Hutchinson, Kansas

A group of investors is transforming 619 acres of duneland outside of Hutchinson, Kansas (home to the great Prairie Dunes Country Club), into a 45-hole golf facility. Named Salt Lick Golf and Hunting Resort, the new complex will feature two 18-hole courses, a nine-hole short course, 36 cabins for overnight stays, and... presumably hunting? Todd Clark and Ron Whitten have been engaged as golf architects, and the resort is targeting a 2028 opening. This unlisted YouTube video describing the project recently came across our desks.

The site once housed Cottonwood Hills Golf Club, a Nick Faldo-designed 18-hole course that closed down several years ago. Andy Johnson and I took a quick look at Cottonwood Hills on our way to Prairie Dunes in 2019. The land is terrific — sandy, undulating, and occasionally dramatic — but the golf course struck us as oddly divorced from its setting. I can see why the Salt Lick developers are just building something new.

I don't know much about Clark as an architect, but his work at Buffalo Dunes Golf Course in Kansas (executed by shaper Zach Varty and superintendent Clay Payne) looks great. Whitten, formerly the architecture editor at Golf Digest, is a deeply knowledgeable golf course scholar and critic, but I've never been sure what his genuine architectural convictions are. He has typically been more eager to play the contrarian than to state his affirmative beliefs. So we'll see.

There's an excellent business case for Salt Lick. Prairie Dunes is already viable destination with a healthy national membership. It makes sense to create a companion resort with more robust lodging and golf options. But the devil, as always, is in the execution.