Bandon April 2018 Trip Report

[robdalky]

Just got back from a great trip to Bandon.

 

We had planned to arrive 4/12 in the afternoon and squeeze in a round at the Preserve, then play 36 a day for the next 3 days, then a final 18 before departing on the 16th.

 

The trip did not get off to a great start when the United flight from SFO to OTH was overweight. They needed 14 volunteers to get off the plane and of our group of 13 players, two ended up taking $2500 travel vouchers to be rerouted to Eugene. They then drove 3 hours and got in around 10 PM. United also shipped some bags different places (like my clubs to Eugene, thankfully the guys in Eugene picked them up) causing a bit of an issue with clubs. Punchline here... shipsticks if you are flying from SFO to OTH. This seemed like a relatively common occurrence speaking with staff. As a sidenote, apparently they can give up to $10K vouchers for denied boarding so I would hold out as long as possible.

 

Pre-trip, we had arranged tournament services to work up a group format for our rounds, and Jim Reid and Kyle Kaufman did a legendary job. If you are interested in having a group out, you must take advantage of that!

 

Once we arrived, 11 of us played the Preserve. Great track. Highly recommend. The weather for this day was in the mid 50s with scattered showers. It poured for about 5 minutes on the first/second hole of the preserve, then the rain cleared off and it was sunny and gorgeous. Putting off the tee on 13 is the best play without a doubt, even with a back right pin. After enjoying this, we all headed over to shorty's and played the par 3 as an 11-some. (No one else was out there). On the 7th hole the rain began to pour and at that point we bailed and all headed to McKee's for dinner, which was spot on. The meatloaf and Bandon pale ale are the truth.

 

The next day, we played Bandon Dunes followed by Bandon Trails. Both incredible, and pretty solid weather. Fairly windy, but mostly dry. We followed that up with dinner at the Gallery, again, excellent. Day 3 featured Pac Dunes followed by Old Mac, had some scattered showers and wind but the weather was pretty manageable. We had dinner at Pac Grill, which was phenomenal. It became clear on Day 3 that the weather was going to quickly go from "OK" to horrible for Day 4.

 

Now Day 4, will probably be the most memorable day of golf of most of our lives. The forecast was for temps between 48-52, winds in the 20-30 mph range, and pouring rain all day. Pretty bad right? At first, we were all a little bummed by that but that quickly passed and we embraced it. We had Bandon followed by Pac lined up. A couple of guys decided not to play at all before the day got underway, and understandably so. We found there to be some standing water on the putting green at Bandon prior to teeing off, but those of us with the right kind of rain gear (more on that later), decided to tee it up.

 

So we played Bandon in pouring rain and wind. The wind howled so loud that you couldn't hear each other talk. At times during wind gusts, the rain came in sideways and felt like you were being sand blasted in the face. Our group of 12 that teed off in the morning fell to 10 after a pair called it quits at the turn (wrong rain gear, soaked to the bone). We found standing water on almost every green and frequently had to move putts in order to actually be able to putt, but honestly it was an experience that was so much fun. On a scale of 1-10, 10 being the worst weather ever, my caddie rated the weather an 8 on the front 9, before changing his vote to a 9 on the back 9. We still had another round planned and on 18 my caddie finally called it quits! (I felt bad for the guy, I told him to not feel obligated to continue looping for the afternoon, if we want to play in that mess it should be on us.) It was hilarious, though, to have a caddie throw in the towel. Hole 18 exemplified the conditions, with a ridiculous tail-wind and a 6 foot puddle around the "pin". (Water had overflown the hole, it was just in the bottom of the puddle). You could hit a putt from 15 foot as hard as you possibly could and it might still come up short. We all took tremendous hacks at our putts and called it two-putt max. I played the best round of golf of my life and shot 81 in those conditions, with one other guy in our group somehow shooting a 79. The group of us that played were laughing and having a hell of a time so there was no doubt we would play Pac, even though the weather was supposed to be just as bad.

 

So a group of 7 of us teed off on Pac Dunes to now only light rain but increased wind. The greens on Pac were all great, without any standing water. Hole numbers 9 and 10 for me will remain the most memorable of the trip. The 9th is a 380 yard Par 4 with a lower green and an upper green. The large fairway has a huge ridge in the middle of it running along the hole that separates the right sided upper fairway and the left side lower fairway. If you are on the wrong side, the hole becomes extremely difficult. Today, we played to the upper green. This hole became very memorable due to 40-50 mph gusts of wind, the strongest I have ever experienced, right into our face. I hit a driver as well as I possibly could and it flew less than 200 yards. Upon getting to the top of the hill we had to walk backwards because of the sandblasting rain face phenomenon. This wind continued on hole 10 and was into us off the left. The 10th is a par 3 with a very elevated tee box, and for us the flag was 138. I hit a 4 iron (typically 210 yard shot for me) as hard as I could and put it to six feet, making the most memorable birdie of the trip for me. The experience of trying to play golf in this weather is hard to describe, but is really fun.

 

We were told that virtually no one ever plays 36 in those conditions, but none of us regretted it for a second. We did not play our Monday round, and instead used the $175 credit from the greens fees to buy some gear in the proshops which are awesome.

 

Although it looks like the weather this week is supposed to be gorgeous, I'm not sure I would trade our one day of horrible weather for good weather, just because of the experience and stories we have to tell now.

 

Now, a couple of other observations.

 

1. Rain gear. You must have good stuff. Of our group, the only stuff that held up was the high end FJ stuff and Galvin Green, with in my estimation Galvin being the best (noticeably so). Do not try to save money on your rain gear. You must have a jacket, pants, waterproof shoes (not water resistant, didn't work), and a goretex bucket hat. If you wear a baseball cap out there, you will get rain down your back and your entire body will be soaked no matter what kind of jacket you have. Try to get some synthetic (not 100% cotton) socks and change between rounds. I had some FJ socks that worked well for that. Two pairs of shoes is recommended but not 100% necessary if you have one good pair (GoreTex Ecco and FJ Pro SL for me, both spikeless, I had no mobility or slipping problems with them). You MUST have the black FJ rain gloves, and do not take them off during the round to putt or anything else. If you need to wring them out just make a tight fist to get the water out.

2. Lily pond rooms. These were great. Nice rooms, no complaints, highly recommend. Whole group stayed there.

3. Preserve. Play it.

4. Tournament services. Use it. They get you awesome scoreboards, and can keep track of all your gambling/payouts/KP/long drive, etc.

5. Caddies. I enjoyed it for the 5 rounds, it probably saved my legs, and I consider it a serious badge of honor that he threw in the towel during the crazy weather! Most of them seem very good. The Rickshas are really good also though, I used that for my last round.

6. Course rankings, for me:

1. Pac Dunes - marvelous greens, great layout, the best of interesting terrain and oceanside.

2. Bandon Trails - Really well done, some diabolical holes (14).

3. Bandon Dunes - Great track, maybe not quite as many showstopper holes as I would have thought, but I love this track.

4. Old Mac - I still liked Old Mac, but found a few things sort of gimmicky. For example, very large greens, and if you are on the wrong side of a mound on the green, you may not be able to keep the ball on the green, no matter what you do. (I was over the back on hole 5 with the pin on the lower edge of mound, I 5 putted). It is not unlikely that you will literally putt the ball off the green at some point.

I highly recommend you play all courses.

5. Shorty's was great and the practice area was great. I did not hit any balls on the range just due to the sheer number of holes we played (128), but it looked great.

6. Walking distance - turned out to be just over 57 miles between the 12th and 16th according to my Garmin watch.

7. Food places - It's all great. Every place was outstanding. Good drinks, food, service. It was amazing (noticed this primarily at Pac Grill), the servers remembered everyone's name at our 13 person table, and when they'd come by to check on you they'd ask specifically if you needed anything.

8. Bunker bar, we had a blast in this place the last night, but hadn't spent any time down there before that. It is a smoking area.

9. Golf balls. You won't need as many as you think.

10. Gear - you will find that each of the pro shops has some of their own stuff. Keep this in mind, they are all different, don't go crazy in one spot, but if you see something at a shop you like you might go ahead and get it because it won't be at the other places.

11. Round cancellations. They only hold each guest to one round per day. There is no charge if you don't play a replay. If you are scheduled for one or more rounds and do not play any round, they will give you golf shop credit for the round as long as you let them know ahead of time (you get nothing if you no call/no show a tee time).

12. Other observations that surprised me - these courses are not remotely flat. The mounds, sidehill lies, knobs, are all over the place and extreme. The pictures of old mac make it look like a flat course - no way, there's nothing flat anywhere really. Trails, despite the elevation and such, is probably the flattest course in terms of your actual lies etc. Although the fairways are very wide on Mac/Pac/Bandon, the rough is extremely difficult since the gorse roots cause these little holes between tufts of grass. It is almost like hitting out of a deep divot about 1/3 of the time if you are in the rough, and sometimes it's bad enough that you can really only pitch a wedge out a few yards.

13. Practice leading up to Bandon - work on your speed control on long 30+foot lag putts, bump and run with your hybrid or putter from 30 yards away from the green, and bunker play. There are bunkers on this course that will cause you to make a 10 on a hole if you aren't confident and if you aren't conservative with your line. Sometimes, you need to go backwards or sideways, and sometimes you want to go 20-30 yards backwards or sideways to avoid the huge lip in front of you (i.e. Hole 6 on Pac). We had 3 and 4 handicaps get to double digits on more than one occasion.

 

Overall, Bandon Dunes golf resort leaves no stone unturned. Everything is truly dialed in for a guy's golf trip. You don't need to leave the resort to go anywhere nor do you have any desire to. The food is great, the service is great, the rooms are great, the courses are great, and the prices are pretty reasonable. You never know what you will get with the weather, so I recommend preparing for a hurricane and forget about trying to shoot a score and just make some memories. If you are considering planning a golf trip somewhere, I would highly recommend that you make it Bandon and don't look back. The travel is a pain in the rear and the only downside. Overall, it was good enough that the first places we are looking into for next year are two of the other Dream Golf resorts, Cabot and Sand Valley... if they are half as good as Bandon, I'm in.

 

10/10 would do again.

[lhahn]

Last day sounded epic! Thanks for the TR.

[spud3]

What you experienced on your last day is called a Howler by the locals.

 

Now you know why.

 

Great write-up!

[mallrat]

I’m always amazed by how much fun is to be had on those horrible weather days. Once you embrace it, the golf is a blast.

[duffer987]

Ha! Good stuff! You find out who likes golf and who really likes golf on days like that.

Hopefully the bailers were treated to some colourful language and jokes after the golf was over :)

 

And putting off the green? Of course! But how about putting off and into a bunker. Good to hear you enjoyed yourself. Cannot speak to Cabot, but S.V. while really cool, just cannot compare to Bandon.

[PorkChopExpress]

Great write up, this is what Bandon is all about.

It's such a blast, you forget what day it is, other than what we playing today

[Sushiyoshi]

When I was there in February, we have hail going sideways due to strong win. It felt like someone was doing acupuncture on your face!

[Edaw68]

Finishing a round in those conditions is good for your golf machismo. I always have an answer for "worst weather you've played in" thanks to a December 2015 round on Pacific.