The Best, Worst and Most Underrated Bandon Routings
And, how does this affect my overall rankings?
I have spent the last few months going hole by hole through each course at Bandon Dunes Resort, determining (in my opinion) the best 1st hole, 2nd hole, etc. Last week, I wrapped it up, which is good because the day after this post goes live, I’m jumping on a plane to Ireland for The Full Irish. (Lots more to come about that, of course.)
So, how did we end up? Let’s go through each routing. At the highest level, our “Best Routing” is a par 70, coming in at a very comfy 6,262 yards (all yardage is from the Green tees). The “Worst Routing” is two strokes ‘tougher’ but barely longer at just 6,319 yards. But our “Most Underrated” routing is a BEAST. Coming in at a weird par 75, it’s also just under 7,000 yards at 6,973. Noting that there’s one set of tees farther back, from the tips this could be well over 7,500 yards. The horror!
Of course, none of these routings exist anywhere but my mind and this webpage/email you’re reading currently.
One thing I love about this routing is the first five holes cover the entire property of 18-hole courses. And boy, there’s a lot of my favorite course, Old Macdonald. It’s really well dispersed overall with five from Old Mac, four from Bandon Dunes, and three from Bandon Trails, Pacific Dunes and Sheep Ranch. This speaks to how much I love the entire resort, and it feels right. Just looking over that list and thinking about each hole and how unbelievably great it is…man, I’m honestly glad I did this exercise.
What’s weird is that there’s only one par-5, and while there are three par-3’s, none of the ones on Pacific Dunes and only one from Trails - in my mind, the courses with the best sets of par-3’s - made the cut. There’s a LOT of par-4’s here, back-to-back, and that isn’t ideal, but it is what it is
Now, let’s take a look at the “worst” routing.
Even though it’s my favorite course, Old Macdonald is prominent here, and unsurprisingly three of the five holes are in that middle area everyone acknowledges is the weak part of the course. Only one hole from Pacific Dunes makes the list, while five more from Sheep Ranch join the fray, with three from Bandon Trails and four from the course I used to rate as my favorite, Bandon Dunes. (In fact, all four are on the front nine. Yikes!)
There’s five par-3’s including three consecutive ones. That’s weird. And five par-5’s! I love courses like this, and yet this is the “worst” routing… What’s to make of this? Not much. If you played this course on its own, you’d absolutely love it. Worst is only a relative thing, and most of these holes are pretty damn good. There are holes on this list that people genuinely adore and some are on here solely because they’re LESS AMAZING than the other four with the same number. It’s good, good stuff.
As for the Most Underrated routing, here it is in all its glory:
With four par-5’s and only one par-3 this is a LOT of golf course. Again, we see quite a bit of each course, so that’s not a bad thing at all.
One of the reasons I started this exercise was that my personal rankings of the courses felt a little weird when I started thinking about the holes, including that weird stretch on Old Macdonald that lags so much.
To refresh, my rankings were/are:
Old Macdonald
Pacific Dunes
Bandon Dunes
Bandon Trails
Sheep Ranch
I took all of the above and created a summary, and then assigned the following - two points for a Best Hole, one point for an Underrated Hole and a -0.5 point for a Worst Hole. (The reason being those “Worst” holes, as discussed, aren’t really that bad.)
Here’s how THAT sorted itself out:
Close, but … different in an important way that backs up exactly what I was feeling - that I didn’t rate Trails highly enough, and I was slightly overrating Bandon Dunes. Not sure if this is now my new rankings per se, but they’ll have an impact.
(Also, that’s a tight grouping. What a freaking great place Bandon Dunes is!)